Carrie Prejean Boller removed from Religious Liberty Commission after antisemitism row

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Carrie Prejean Boller has been removed from the Religious Liberty Commission, its chair, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Feb. 11.

The announcement came shortly after the commission held a Feb. 9 hearing which aimed to examine a rise in antisemitism where Prejean Boller, a Catholic, initiated some tense exchanges with Jewish American witnesses.

“Carrie Prejean Boller has been removed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission,” Patrick said in a post on X. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”

Witnesses at the hearing, which included Jewish American students and rabbis, testified about instances of antisemitism they experienced or witnessed, including at their universities, which they said increased after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, carrying out the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust and provoking Israel to declare war the following day. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, with Hamas militants engaging in sexual violence and taking hostages before retreating to the Gaza Strip.

Antisemetic incidents have seen a sharp uptick in recent years according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks antisemitic attacks. That group said in a 2025 report that it recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. the previous year, which marked a 344 percent increase over the groups’ findings from the previous five years.

But Prejean Boller, a former Miss California USA, began a tense exchange with witnesses by asking if “speaking out about what many Americans view as a genocide in Gaza should be treated as antisemitic?”

Since Israel’s declaration of war, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed out of Gaza’s 2.1 million pre-war population, a figure Israel’s military recently acknowledged. The vast majority of Palestinians killed are reported to be civilians, making the war among those with the highest civilian death rates in any 21st-century conflict.

Prejean Boller’s line of questioning also included her argument that “Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know. So are all Catholics antisemites?” But she did not define what she meant by “Zionism,” a term that has a spectrum of definitions.

The Vatican formally recognized the state of Israel in 1993, reiterating the Church’s condemnation of antisemitism, while the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of the Holy Land have taken issue with “Christian Zionism,” which is associated principally with Protestant evangelicalism.

Some witnesses at the Feb. 9 hearing argued that accusations of Jewish Americans having divided loyalty between the U.S. and Israel often feature in antisemitic rhetoric. But Prejean Boller, who was wearing a pin that jointly displayed U.S. and Palestinian flags, went on to press witnesses on whether they would consider her an antisemite for not supporting the political state of Israel, which she called “a foreign country.”

Elsewhere in the hearing, Prejean Boller also had a tense exchange with Seth Dillon, CEO of conservative Christian satire website The Babylon Bee. Dillon took aim at conservative media figures who he said have failed to speak out against antisemitism, such as that from podcaster Candace Owens.

When Prejean Boller argued that Owens — who became Catholic in 2024 — was not an antisemite, Dillon replied, “You should look up more of her statements.”

Among her promotion of many antisemitic conspiracy theories, Owens has encouraged her audience to read an antisemitic text by anti-Jewish German Catholic theologian August Rohling (1839-1931), who spread the libel that Jews ritually murdered Christians and drank their blood. Owens has accused Jews of being behind the slave trade, among her other conspiracy theories, and called leading Jewish conservative Ben Shapiro a member of the “synagogue of Satan.”

Prejean Boller at the commission said she listens to Owens daily.

At the hearing, Father Thomas Ferguson, pastor of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and a member of the commission’s Advisory Board of Religious Leaders, said that the Catholic Church affirms that the “human person has a right to religious freedom.”

Since the Second Vatican Council, which took place 20 years after the systematic slaughter of 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust (known in Hebrew as the Shoah) during World War II, the Catholic Church has denounced “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone,” while affirming the “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews,” as stated in the 1965 “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.” That conciliar document is better known by its Latin name “Nostra Aetate.”

Specifically, “Nostra Aetate” states that Jesus Christ’s voluntary submission to his passion and death for the redemption of humankind “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” The text also declared that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

Father Ferguson pointed to that document when he said, “For our purposes today, the church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews, decries hatred, persecutions and all displays of antisemitism directed at Jews at any time by anyone.”

Pastor Franklin Graham, another commissioner, took specific aim at the trope that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, saying, “He is alive, he is risen.” Father Ferguson applauded that line as “absolutely right,” but stressed, “Who is responsible for the death of Jesus? We would say all of us.”

Prejean Boller’s comments gained further attention on social media, where she argued, “I will never bend the knee to the state of Israel. Ever.” In that post, Prejean Boller inveighed against her American evangelical upbringing for some political views on Israel in that community, claimed her Catholic faith backed up her own views, and then returned a shoutout to Owens.

“I will continue to stand against Zionist supremacy in America,” she said in another post.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board, like Patrick, also pointed out that Prejean Boller had tried to hijack a hearing meant to discuss antisemitism: “Her fellow commissioners arrived to discuss antisemitism. Ms. Prejean Boller came wearing a Palestinian flag pin, with an ally who was recording her remarks against Israel and in defense of podcaster Candace Owens.”

“Ms. Prejean Boller converted to Catholicism in April but lectured witnesses, including a priest, as well as fellow Catholic commissioners on their faith,” the editorial continued. “One commissioner, Ryan Anderson, read her excerpts from the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in rebuttal. But what do they know?”

After her removal, Prejean Boller reposted Owens’ response to Patrick that argued, “Carrie didn’t hijack anything. You hosted a performative Zionist hearing meant to neuter the Christian faith.”

In his statement announcing Prejean Boller’s removal from the commission, Patrick argued, “The Commission has done outstanding work through five hearings. Two more are scheduled. The testimony has been both illuminating and heartbreaking. Under the Biden Administration, Americans of all faiths had their religious liberty not only stolen from them but were often punished for standing up for their faith, in education, the military, the private sector, and even the ministry.”

“This spring, the Commission will deliver one of the most important reports in American history directly to the President,” he continued. “The President respects all faiths. He believes that all Americans have a right to receive the great inheritance given to them by our founding fathers in the First Amendment. I am grateful to President Trump for having the vision and boldness to create this Commission. Fighting for the Word of God and religious freedom is what this nation was founded upon. Leading this fight will be one of his greatest legacies.”

The White House did not provide comment when asked by OSV News about Prejean Boller’s removal from the commission.

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