President Donald Trump appoints a lawyer and part-time beauty salon owner to decide which foreigners can enter the U.S.
The U.S. State Department announced that Mora Namdar has been promoted from the position responsible for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa to assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, overseeing everything from passport issuance to visa approvals and revocations.
Namdar, the daughter of Iranian immigrants, previously held the job on an interim basis during Trump’s first term in 2020.
Mora Namdar (centre) poses with her salon team in 2017. /Facebook
Namdar owns a small chain of beauty salons called Bam in her native Texas, with locations in the West Village in her hometown of Dallas, as well as in Fort Worth and Plano.
She told Voyage Dallas magazine that the original salon, which was designed to be “gorgeous, sophisticated and evoke dreams of a Parisian paradise in Dallas” with a 20-foot-high flower wall, started out because her friends asked her to do makeup for their weddings. “I suddenly realized that there needed to be a glamorous place that looked at female styling as an art form,” she said, while telling DMagazine in 2017 that it was “fun and cheeky.” Makeup prices start at $45, and professional makeup sessions start at $55.
Mora Namdar appeared on WFAA 88 ABC’s Good Morning Texas in 2016 to promote her salon. / Facebook
The chain has now diversified into hair extensions (starting at $325), events, off-site events (including $100 per person lashes and braiding wands, and home visits).
Namdar not only owns the salon but also runs a one-woman law firm. On Christmas Day, she announced that the company was no longer active.
She was also one of the contributors to the infamous “Project 2025,” which had a major impact on Trump’s second term, and she wrote a chapter on the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
In the letter, Namdall accused USAGM – the federal umbrella of U.S.-funded broadcasters that includes Voice of America and Radio Free Europe – of gross mismanagement, “espionage-related security risks” and using “anti-American talking points to repeat the propaganda of U.S. adversaries,” while calling for it to be reformed or shut down entirely.
Maura Nandal at the law firm she owns. / Instagram
Namdal was confirmed by the Senate earlier this month and now puts an operator with a political background and media experience in charge of a unit that can effectively decide who can enter the United States and who will be denied.
In testimony prepared for an October Senate hearing, she cast the visa ruling as critical to national security and said she agreed with Rubio’s assessment that if someone “undermined[s] our foreign policy, [then] Consular officials have the authority to revoke their visas. “
Official government photo of Mora Namdar 2020. /State Council
Namdar’s record within the government has come under scrutiny. Multiple media reports said her interim leadership of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs this year raised internal concerns about management and morale.
She will now lead the administration’s efforts to ban people from entering the United States, including taking action against citizens of various European countries that the president, 79, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, have banned from entering the U.S. due to “alarming” censorship of “American views” on social media platforms, the president announced on Wednesday and promised more action may be taken.
When contacted for comment, Tommy Piggott, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesman, told The Daily Beast: “This is a shameful, deplorable, and quite frankly sexist way to describe her career. Assistant Secretary Maura Namdall is an accomplished lawyer, business owner and government official. Americans can be proud of patriotic public servants like her who step up to serve our country and advance our national interests.”
Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from Plan 2025 during the campaign. But by the end of the year, PBS reported that outside trackers estimated the administration had achieved about half of its agenda goals, with “people-is-policy” hires — like Namdall and FCC Chairman Brendan Kahl — singled out as key mechanisms.
The FCC is an independent regulator that oversees broadcast licensing, telecommunications and the government’s growing media power struggles and “viewpoint” disputes.
Photo of Donald Trump and Brendan Carr chatting in November 2024. /Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Carr, 46, authored the FCC chapter of Project 2025, which argued the agency should take a more aggressive stance against “Big Tech” and what he called “censorship cartels,” while combining a culture wars agenda with a clear push to roll back existing telecom regulations.
Since taking office, Kahl has taken actions that critics say are consistent with those priorities, steps that have sparked a backlash in the Senate and prompted warnings from the former leader of the Federal Communications Commission about chillingly politicized rhetoric.
The Daily Beast also contacted Namdahl for comment.
