23/05/2026
No words are strong enough for the fury and disappointment over this!
"The star of the Epstein files and the Access Hollywood tape is the last person who should be handed the keys to a museum celebrating American women." That was Congressman Joe Morelle's verdict on how House Republicans tanked the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum -- a bipartisan project more than two decades in the making, which his own colleagues voted down on the House floor Thursday after Republicans added a last-minute toxic amendment to the bill.
The creation of a women's museum itself is not a partisan idea. Congress first authorized it in 2020 -- the House had passed an earlier version 374 to 37, a landslide with most Republicans in support, and the museum was signed into law that December by Donald Trump as part of a year-end spending package. All this latest bill had to do was the final practical step: transfer a plot of land on the National Mall so construction could begin. The bill itself carried no cost -- it simply transferred the land -- and supporters had already raised $70 million in private donations toward construction, money eligible for matching federal funds.
As recently as last summer, the Democratic and Republican Women's Caucuses sent a joint letter urging Congress to fund it. In March 2025, the bill's lead Republican sponsor hosted a Women's History Month celebration at the Capitol with Lynda Carter -- Wonder Woman herself. The bill had more than 200 cosponsors from both parties.
Then, in March of this year, Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois introduced a substitute amendment in the House Administration Committee that rewrote it. The amendment gave Trump the power to change the Smithsonian's long-planned site for the museum on the National Mall and handed design and construction approval to commissions stacked with his appointees. It also struck the word "diversity" from the bill -- with any mention of "diversity" apparently toxic to Trump's Republican Party -- directing the museum's advisory council to ensure a "range" of viewpoints instead.
The last-minute Republican amendment also added a new mission statement declaring the museum would be dedicated to "biological women," and a prohibition stating the museum "may not identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as a female" -- language that would bar any transgender woman from its exhibits. The amendment carried no definition of "biological women," and the Democratic Women's Caucus warned it could also be used to exclude intersex women.
Democrats, who had championed the museum for twenty years, refused to vote for the version Republicans had poisoned. "It was a simple bill," said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus. "You kind of ruined it with your trans obsession and your culture wars." The bill failed, 204 to 216. Every Democrat voted no -- and so did six Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson held the vote open for nearly an hour, scrounging for support from his own ranks, and could not find it.
Here is the part Republicans would rather not dwell on. Of the six Republicans who voted no, not one was a woman -- and several opposed the museum not over the trans language, but because they did not think a museum dedicated to women should exist at all. A GOP staffer told the Washington Examiner that members feared it would become "woke," and objected to its location and its cost. "We say we need to unite this country, but then we isolate every group," said Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the six men who sank it.
Given how long women have been erased from the historical record, the case for a museum dedicated to their history is obvious and, to most people, uncontroversial. Of roughly 2,400 national monuments and memorials in the United States, only about five percent honor women. That gap -- the near-total absence of women from the way America commemorates its own history -- is the entire point of the museum. It is what twenty years of bipartisan work set out to correct. On Thursday, that work was traded away, in the words of the Democratic Women's Caucus, "for Trump's gain and ego."
Leger Fernández was not conceding anything. "Today, the House proved that the Women's History Museum does not belong to Trump," she said after the vote. "It belongs to the women whose blood, sweat, and tears paint the picture of America. Women deserve to tell our own story." The fight now moves to whether Republican leaders will restore the original bipartisan bill -- the one that honored all the women who built this country, without putting the museum's future under one man's control.
--> While Democrats continue to fight for a clean bill that reflects the bipartisan agreement that had been reached, you can support the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum directly as it works toward a permanent home at https://womenshistory.si.edu
A Mighty Girl, we've sought out the best biographies and historical fiction for children and teens about inspiring girls and women, many of whose stories have been neglected by history. To browse our extensive collection of books about Mighty Girl role models, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/books/history-biography/biography
For children's books about extraordinary global women, visit our blog post "50 Children's Books About Mighty Girls & Women Around The World" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=33102
You can also sort our biography collection by the various role models' specializations from science to the creative arts at https://www.amightygirl.com/books/history-biography?cat=206
For two titles to introduce kids to an assortment of inspiring women role models, we recommend the picture book "Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/shaking-things-up), and the illustrated biography "HerStory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook the World" for ages 8 to 13 (https://www.amightygirl.com/herstory)
To see more stories from A Mighty Girl, you can sign-up for A Mighty Girl's free email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter
To read more about the vote in the New York Times, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/arts/design/womens-museum-bill-sinks-amid-dispute-over-trump-and-trans-issues.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kVA.kY2P.SbstPWDAWjjY&smid=url-share
To read The 19th's reporting on why Democratic women pulled their support for the museum bill, visit https://19thnews.org/2026/05/smithsonian-american-womens-history-museum-bill
To read the Democratic Women's Caucus's full statement of opposition, visit https://democraticwomenscaucus.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=766
