Religious Liberty Commission Hearing on Feb. 9. Department of Justice video screengrab / YouTube
Elise Winland on February 11, 2026
Carrie Prejean Boller, a Catholic commissioner on the White House Religious Liberty Commission, was removed from the panel Feb. 11 after arguing during a hearing that her Catholic faith does not require support for political Zionism and that criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza should not automatically be labeled antisemitic.
Republican Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, announced the decision 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,” Patrick wrote. “This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”
During the Feb. 9 hearing, which focused on debates and riots on American college campuses and the role of government officials in protecting religious freedom, Prejean Boller cited multiple Catholic scholars, Scripture passages, and Jewish leaders to support her position and pressed witnesses on whether they believed her opposition to Zionism, grounded in religious conviction, made her “antisemitic.”
The exchange quickly drew mixed reactions. Critics accused her of diverting the commission’s work and called for her removal, while others defended her remarks as a principled expression of Catholic belief.
Prejean Boller rejected claims that she had “hijacked” the hearing, instead framing her comments as an exercise of religious liberty.
“I have the religious freedom to refuse support for a government that is bombing civilians and starving families in Gaza, and that does not make me an antisemite,” she said in a separate X post. “It makes me a pro-life Catholic and a free American who will not surrender religious liberty to political pressure.”
She also wrote on X that she decided to raise the issue “after watching many participants ignore, minimize, or outright deny what is plainly visible: a campaign of mass killing and starvation” against the Catholic community and broader population in Gaza.
Catholic Church leaders, including Pope Leo XIV and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, have similarly spoken out about Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza and their impact on local Christian communities. A coalition of Catholic and other Christian leaders in the Holy Land recently issued a statement warning against Christian Zionism, which they called a “damaging ideology.”
A day before her removal, Prejean Boller questioned whether the commission would dismiss her over her religious beliefs.
“[A] Religious Liberty Commission prepared to fire a commissioner for her Catholic faith? If that happens, it proves their mission was never religious liberty, but a Zionist agenda,” she wrote. “I refuse to resign.”
Prejean Boller was appointed to the commission by President Donald Trump in June 2025.
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