President Donald Trump removed Carrie Prejean Boller, the spouse of former NFL quarterback Kyle Boller, from the White House Religious Liberty Commission following a contentious antisemitism hearing on Feb. 9 that exposed deep divisions within the advisory body.
The 38-year-old former Miss California USA said she received a brief email from Mary Sprowls in the Presidential Personnel Office informing her that her position was “terminated effective immediately.” Although the email was dated Feb. 12, Boller said she did not see it until mid-March.
Two days after the Feb. 9 hearing, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the commission, announced Boller’s removal. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” Patrick wrote on social media. “This is clearly, without question, what happened on Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.” Commission members said they had tried to meet with Boller before the Feb. 9 hearing to dissuade her from delivering her planned remarks, but she declined to do so.
Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., also rejected Boller’s one-sided assertions, calling them “absurd.” The bishop said Boller “was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at the hearing: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, and hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes.”
President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission on May 1, 2025, to advise the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council on religious freedom issues. Boller was among the initial 13 appointees to the commission, chaired by Patrick with Ben Carson as vice chair.
The commission held another public hearing on March 16 on religious freedom in health care and carried on without Boller. During that session, Bishop Barron observed that Catholics are increasingly being edged out of health care and social service roles.
In a strongly worded open letter on social media after her dismissal, Boller accused the president of abandoning the principles that once defined his movement. She reminded Trump that in 2009, when he owned the Miss USA pageant, he initially defended her free-speech rights and kept her Miss California title despite backlash over her comment that marriage should be between a man and a woman; he later ended her contract that June, citing “continued breach of contract issues.”
The mother of two said her commission efforts concentrated on defending religious liberty for people affected by vaccine mandates and other limits. She said she supported mothers denied religious exemptions and spoke with nurses who lost jobs after refusing the COVID vaccine on religious grounds.
In her letter to President Trump, Boller said she was upset that she learned of her termination from an email sent by a staffer rather than directly from him. “I stood by you when you were called every name imaginable. I wore the red MAGA hat proudly because I believed in what you were fighting for. Now, I don’t even recognize you,” she wrote.
Amid wider tensions over U.S. policy in the region, Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim adviser to the commission, resigned in protest a day after the termination became public in March, citing Boller’s removal and the administration’s foreign actions. The commission is also facing a federal lawsuit from progressive religious groups alleging it lacks diverse representation and is made up almost entirely of conservative Christians.
