President Donald Trump has installed a lawyer and part-time beauty salon owner to decide which foreigners are allowed into the United States.
The State Department announced that Mora Namdar has been promoted from her post on US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa to become assistant secretary for consular affairs, overseeing everything from issuing passports to visa approvals and revocations.
Namdar, who is the daughter of Iranian immigrants, previously served in an interim capacity during Trump’s first term in 2020.
Mora Namdar, center, pictured with her beauty salon team in 2017. / Facebook
Namdar owns a mini-chain of beauty salons called Bam in her native Texas, with locations in the West Village, her hometown of Dallas, as well as Fort Worth and Plano.
The original salon, she told Voyage Dallas magazine, was meant to be “gorgeous, sophisticated and conjure up dreams of a Parisian paradise in Dallas,” with a 20-foot flower wall, and grew out of her friends asking her to do their makeup for their weddings. “I realized there was a need for a gorgeous place that treated women’s style as an art form,” she said, while telling DMagazine in 2017 that it was “fun and sassy.” Breakouts start at $45 and professional makeup sessions at $55.
Mora Namdar appeared on Good Morning Texas on WFAA 88 ABC in 2016 to promote her salon. / Facebook
The chain has diversified into hair extensions starting at $325, events, off-site events, including eyelash runs and braids for $100 per person, and home visits.
Namdar combined salon ownership with running a one-woman law firm. On Christmas Day, she announced that the company was no longer active.
She was also a contributor to the notorious Project 2025, which heavily influenced Trump’s second term, writing a section on the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
In it, Namdar accused USAGM — the federal umbrella for US-funded broadcasters, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe — of mismanagement, “espionage-related security risks” and using “anti-US talking points to parrot propaganda from America’s adversaries,” while calling for it to be reformed or shut down entirely.
Mora Namdar at the office of the lawyer he owns. / Instagram
Namdar’s Senate confirmation earlier this month now puts a politically connected operator with media experience in charge of an office that can effectively decide who gets into the United States — and who gets rejected.
In prepared testimony for her Senate hearing in October, she framed visa adjudication as critical to national security, saying she agreed with Rubio’s assessment that if someone “undermines[s] our foreign policy, [then] consular officers have the authority to withdraw their visa.”
2020 official government photo of Mora Namdar. / Department of State
Namdar’s record within the government has already attracted considerable attention. Multiple outlets have reported that her interim leadership of the State Department’s Near Eastern affairs office this year sparked internal concerns about management and morale.
She will now lead the administration’s moves to ban people from entering the US, including actions against citizens of various European countries who the president, 79, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, announced on Wednesday had been barred from entering the US for what they described as “egregious” censorship of “American viewpoints” on social media platforms, promising more likely to come.
When reached for comment, Deputy State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told the Daily Beast: “What a disgraceful, pathetic and quite sexist way to describe her career. Assistant Secretary Mora Namdar is an accomplished lawyer, business owner and government servant. Americans can be proud that patriotic public servants like her are stepping up to serve our national interests and step forward.”
Trump repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign. But by the end of the year, PBS reported that outside trackers estimated the administration had implemented about half of the agenda’s goals, with “personnel is politics” hires — such as Namdar and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr — highlighted as a key mechanism.
The FCC is the independent regulator that oversees broadcasting licenses, telecommunications and a growing portion of government media power struggles and “viewpoint” disputes.
Donald Trump and Brendan Carr pictured chatting in November 2024. / Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Carr, 46, authored the FCC’s chapter of Project 2025, which argues that the agency should take a more aggressive stance toward “Big Tech” and what he calls a “censorship cartel,” while pairing the culture war agenda with an explicit push to roll back existing telecom regulations.
Since taking office, Carr has moved in ways critics say align with those priorities — steps that have sparked a Senate pushback and warnings from former FCC leaders about the creeping politicization of the speech.
The Daily Beast has also reached out to Namdar for comment.