An adviser to the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission announced her resignation on Friday, accusing the administration of committing crimes and suppressing the free expression of Muslims on behalf of a “Zionist political agenda.”
Sameera Munshi, who is Muslim, wrote in a pair of social media posts that “the injustice and atrocities of this administration at home and abroad” and the removal of a commissioner who used a hearing on antisemitism to express her opposition to Zionism compelled her to resign.
“In this country, people of faith are having their free expression stripped away, and even their lives put at risk, because of their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the sake of a Zionist political agenda,” Munshi wrote. “Even more pressing is this government’s unlawful killing of children and civilians in Iran at the urging of a genocidal state.”
U.S. President Donald Trump appointed Munshi to the advisory board of the commission in May, citing her record of having “courageously spoken out against forcing children to learn radical gender ideology in schools.”
Munshi’s resignation comes one day after the White House formally removed Carrie Prejean Boller, a former “Miss California” who is now a conservative activist, from the commission.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced in February that Boller would be removed from the commission after he accused her of hijacking a hearing on antisemitism to ask Jewish witnesses if they would denounce Israel and claimed that Zionism was incompatible with Catholicism.
“Since we’ve mentioned Israel a total of 17 times, are you willing to condemn what Israel has done in Gaza?” Boller asked Shabbos Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jewish activist, at the Feb. 9 hearing.
During one exchange, she also claimed to have never heard the conservative commentator Candace Owens make antisemitic remarks, despite Owens frequently engaging in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, including that Jews orchestrated the transatlantic slave trade and that Israelis worship Baal, who forces them to murder children.
Boller claimed after the hearing that Patrick lacked the authority to remove her from the commission and that she could only be removed by Trump.
On Thursday she posted a screenshot of an email from an official in the Presidential Personnel Office that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump” she had been “terminated effective immediately.”
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a member of the commission’s advisory board of religious leaders, applauded Munshi’s resignation and Boller’s removal on Friday.
“Goodbye and good riddance,” Menken wrote. “Munshi and Carrie Prejean Boller are not united by a common background or common beliefs but by a common hate.”
“The Religious Freedom Commission will be able to do its productive and important work more effectively because she has left,” he added. “Let the door not hit her on the way out.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote a letter to the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees on Friday calling for the committees to review whether Boller was illegally removed from the commission for criticizing Israel.
“Mrs. Boller claims the designated federal officer of the commission, Ms. Mary Margaret Bush—allegedly at the direction of the White House—initially informed Mrs. Boller that she could no longer repost or reiterate such statements due to their being ‘antisemitic,’” Massie wrote.
“If the above accounts are accurate and Mrs. Boller’s removal was motivated by her refusal to refrain from expressing religious views or asking questions reflecting those views, such action raises concerns that a federal advisory body charged with defending religious liberty engaged in viewpoint discrimination and retaliation against protected speech,” he said.
