Mar. 16, 2026, 5:18 PM EDT

President Donald Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission, which is filled with right-wing zealotsappears to be coming apart at the seams.

Last week’s resignation of Sameerah Munshi, formerly the only Muslim woman selected as one of the commission’s advisers, underscores the religious divisions that are causing disarray for the panel and the conservative movement more broadly.

Munshi is a conservative activist who has advocated for allowing parents to opt out of lesson plans related to LGBTQ+ issues, a stance the White House has praised for its rejection of “radical gender ideology.” She said her resignation was due to two things: the commission’s expulsion of conservative activist Carrie Prejean Boller and the Trump administration’s war with Iran.

I recently wrote about how Boller’s removal, which followed a heated argument at a commission hearing over antisemitism, has fueled allegations of anti-Catholicism within the MAGA movement. Boller recently appeared on an episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast for a chummy chat about her removal. And Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., requested last week that the House Oversight and Judiciary committees review her ouster.

In addition to that, Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission is being sued over its lack of diversity. (The White House has said the panel is intended to reflect a “diversity of faith traditions, professional backgrounds and viewpoints.”)

So Munshi’s resignation is just the latest negative publicity for the commission.

“I resign in protest of two deeply troubling developments: 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,” Munshi wrote on Substack.

“Ultimately, I will have to stand before God and answer to Him for my role in this commission,” she added. “I ask His forgiveness if I have legitimized their evil or the evil of this administration in any way. I ask Him to keep my intentions pure and to guide me toward paths that bring true benefit to my community.”

Boller’s removal has also helped fuel right-wing antipathy toward the Rev. Paula White, who Boller has said was behind a “witch hunt” that led to her ouster. During their conversation, Boller and Carlson took turns bashing White, a controversial preacher of the prosperity gospel who has served as religious adviser to Trump.

Some evangelicals in the MAGA movement were apoplectic when White was chosen to lead the White House Faith Office. And now it appears the chickens have come home to roost as her involvement with Trump’s White House threatens the MAGA movement’s religious coalition.

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.

Mar. 16, 2026, 7:49 PM EDT

ByNicholas Grossman

The Iran was is exposing President Donald Trump’s unfitness for national leadership. The lie-filled bluster and escalation he relied on to succeed in business and domestic politics aren’t workingand the situation is out of his control. The world is interconnected and other people get a say, including oil companies and energy markets. But Trump never understood that, and since he has no other moves, he’s kept doubling down despite no plausible path to victory, making things worse.

With Venezuela, Trump said he attacked to take oilequating his personal rapaciousness with national interest. After U.S. special operations forces ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas MaduroTrump found the rest of the Venezuelan regime more pliable, including now-interim President Delcy Rodriguez, and told U.S. energy companies to go get Venezuela’s oil.

Except those companies didn’t want it. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise. Venezuela’s oil deposits are dirty, needing considerable refinement, and drilling isn’t profitable unless oil is priced higher than it was at the time. The infrastructure is poor, and U.S. companies would have to spend billions developing it. And the security situation was volatile after the U.S. military overthrew the national leader. Oil is flammable, and platforms would be a target if an insurgency develops.

But apparently it was a surprise to the White House. Trump berated energy executivesbut that didn’t work. They won’t throw away money just because he told them to.

With the Iran war, Trump is trying to bully not only energy companies, but the entire global energy market. Except the war is disrupting supply, making prices rise no matter what he says.

Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack Iran, and hasn’t articulated a clear goalbut did issue existential threats. At various times he’s called for regime change, told Iranians to overthrow the government, and demanded “unconditional surrender.”

And this comes after Trump reneged on the Iran nuclear deal without cause in his first term. That showed Iran that the United States in general, and Trump specifically, cannot be trusted to honor any agreement, and will react to concessions by demanding more.

In response to the U.S.-Israeli attack, Iran played its biggest card, closing the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a narrow choke point at the end of the Persian Gulf, and a kink in the waterway leaves it exposed to a lot of Iran’s coastline. About 20% of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, and it isn’t hard for Iran to stop the traffic.

Iran can’t prevent U.S. and Israeli forces from flying over the gulf, and they probably couldn’t keep the U.S. Navy out of it, but to close the strait, they don’t need to. They only have to make shipping companies afraid to sail, and insurance companies think the risk of insuring the ships is too high. With threats, a few attacks on tankers, and now possibly sea mines, Iran has.

Again, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. For example, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz” by Caitlin Talmadge appeared in the leading journal International Security in 2008.

To address this crisis of his own making, Trump tried saying the war is almost over and the U.S. already won. It made the oil price drop back down for a bit, but as U.S.-Israeli bombardment continued and market disruptions got worse, it rose again.

Trump tried telling ships to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, but most wouldn’t, and a few who did exploded, presumably at Iran’s hand.

He tried releasing oil from America’s strategic reserve, and some other countries did from theirs. But that’s a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, and had little impact.

Then he tried bombing Kharg, an island in the gulf that Iran uses for oil exports. The apparent logic is that hindering Iran’s shipping will get Iran to stop blocking everyone else’s.

That recalls one of Trump’s go-to moves in business: the bad faith lawsuit. He’d break a contract, screw someone over, and dare them to sue him. Or would initiate legal action himself. Either way, he bet that he’d have more resources and greater tolerance for a protracted legal fight, and the other party would settle even when the facts were on their side.

That won’t work with Iran.

By making the threat existential, Trump set the bar for the Iranian regime at survival, and incentivized them to use whatever leverage they have. America’s military can overwhelm Iran’s, and is doing a lot more damage to Iran than the Iranians can do back. But even without its main source of revenue, Iran can keep up a defensive war for a while. Especially since the only thing it really needs to do is keep getting some shots off, such as with relatively cheap, domestically-produced Shahed dronesor small boats laden with explosives. The U.S. probably can’t stop that by force without a large ground invasion and indefinite occupation of Iran’s gulf coastline—a massive, costly undertaking—and maybe not even then.

Much of the time when Trump was in the private sector and messed up, his rich dad bailed him out or he’d declare bankruptcy. Instead of holding equity or debt, Trump would have the business pay him a salary and bonusesso that money was gone when the company went under, and his partners and contractors would take most of the losses.

When Trump stiffed lenders, there was usually someone else he could get to give him money. That’s how the Trump Organization ended up with a lot of Russian financing — by that point, just about everyone else wouldn’t touch him.

Now he’s done that to America. After a year of Trump denigratingthreatening, and tariffing U.S. alliesno one is willing to help rescue the U.S. from a mess of its own making, no matter how much he browbeats them.

Trump started something that quickly spiraled and seems out of ideas. There’s no one to sue, no rules to manipulate, just the hard realities of resource shortages and war.

And there’s a good chance Iran can tolerate being bombed more than the U.S. can tolerate a rapidly rising oil price and the economic damage it causes.