Only Muslim Woman on Trump's MAGA Religious Committee Resigns in Protest of Iran War
The cracks in MAGA keep widening. This week, Sameerah Munshi, the only Muslim woman serving on Trump’s White House Religious Liberty Commission, resigned from her advisory board in protest of both the war in Iran and a MAGA colleague being fired for challenging the definition of antisemitism. On Thursday, she published a Substack, further explaining her decision and asking God to forgive her for participating in the “evil” of the commission and the administration.
“I resign in protest of two deeply troubling developments,” Munshi, who served on the Advisory Board of Lay Leaders, wrote on Friday. “The official removal of Carrie Prejean Boller for her deeply held beliefs about Palestine; and the federal government’s illegal war against Iran, undertaken without clear constitutional or congressional authorization.”
The commission, which was created by Trump via executive order in May, has up to 14 members and three advisory boards consisting of religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders, and is tasked with advising the White House and reporting to Trump up to twice a year.
Munshi, a conservative and Muslim activist, first caught Trump’s attention in 2023, when she supported Maryland parents who wanted to opt their kids out of reading books with LGBTQ+ characters in school on religious grounds. The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, ultimately went to the conservative Supreme Court, which sided with the parents in a 6-3 ruling in June.
In a statement announcing the commission’s advisory board appointments in May, the White House praised Munshi for “courageously [speaking] out against forcing children to learn radical gender ideology in schools.”
Meanwhile, Prejean Boller—a former Miss California USA contestant turned social media influencer who describes herself as an anti-Zionist Catholic—was removed from the commission in February, allegedly after arguing that being anti-Zionist was not antisemitic while challenging the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.
After Prejean-Boller was removed,
After her removal, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas and chair of the commission, said she had “hijacked” the meeting.
On Thursday, she tweeted a screenshot of a very short email from the “Presidential Personnel Office” confirming her termination, writing: “President Trump officially removes me from the Religious Liberty Commission for exercising my Religious Liberty.”
“I am disgusted. I am absolutely disgusted with this president,” Pregjean Boller told Middle Eastern Eye the same day. “He betrayed the American people, and he’s betrayed our constitution.”
My name is Sameerah Munshi. I am a Presidential appointee serving as advisor to the White House Religious Liberty Commission.
Today, I am resigning over the injustice and atrocities of this administration at home and abroad.
Full statement below ⬇️
Also here:…— Sameerah Munshi (@SameerahMunshi) March 13, 2026
Munshi, speaking to MEE, said she started to work closely with Prejean Boller in September, after speaking before the commission about schools having a constitutional right to allow students to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “After I testified about Palestine, I stopped receiving the witness lists before each hearing,” she told the outlet. “So I don’t know if that was a coincidence, if it was organizational, just a miscommunication on their end, or if they literally held it against me about what I testified on.” She said Prejean Boller was the only other commission member to support her.
“I think what’s really important about Carrie that I haven’t seen within the conservative movement is that she really respects Muslims,” Munshi said.
“The Trump administration has repeatedly paid lip service to free speech and religious freedom while obsessively trying to smear and silence Americans who dare to criticize a foreign government, especially American Muslims and even American Catholics like Carrie Prejean Boller,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement to Jezebel. “The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from criticism, not to protect religious freedom for the American people.”
For two weeks now, the U.S. and Israel have waged an illegal war on Iran, launching a series of strikes across the country. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the U.S. was likely responsible for the missile that struck a girls’ school and killed 175 people, most of them children.
“It is painfully obvious through their actions that this administration has no regard for the Constitution’s protection of free expression and religious liberty, nor its detailing of war powers,” Munshi wrote in her letter. “Not only is the American public against this aggression, but our tax dollars are funding the very violence that we oppose, both against innocent Palestinians and now Iranians.”
“I support America over Israel, and unfortunately that means I cannot support Trump or this government,” she concluded.