Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Is Delayed Until Trump Leaves Office, Mnuchin Says
Under a proposed redesign of the $20 bill, Harriet Tubman would have replaced Andrew Jackson.CreditUniversal History Archive/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Harriet Tubman — former slave, abolitionist, “conductor” on the Underground Railroad — will not become the face of the $20 bill until after President Trump leaves office, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday.
Plans to unveil the Tubman bill in 2020, an Obama administration initiative, would be postponed until at least 2026, Mr. Mnuchin said, and the bill itself would not likely be in circulation until 2028.
Until then, bills with former President Andrew Jackson’s face will continue to pour out of A.T.M.s and fill Americans’ wallets.
Treasury Department officials did not say whether Mr. Trump had a hand in the decision, and Mr. Mnuchin would not say whether he himself believes that Tubman should be on the bill’s face. “I’ve made no decision as it relates to that,” Mr. Mnuchin said Wednesday at a congressional hearing in response to a question from Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts.
During the hearing, Mr. Mnuchin said that he was now focused on enhancing the anti-counterfeiting security features of the currency, focusing first on the $10 and $50 bills. Designing new imagery is on the back burner.
“It is my responsibility now to focus on what is the issue of counterfeiting and the security features,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary down the road.”
Replacing Jackson with Tubman was both filled with symbolism and marred by controversy.
Tubman was born into slavery, escaped and then returned to the South, where she led other slaves to freedom. She was a Union scout during the Civil War and later advocated women’s voting rights. Jackson orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands to the east of the Mississippi River and sent them marching west on the so-called Trail of Tears.
In 2017, speculation began that Mr. Trump might scrap Mr. Lew’s plan for the $20 bill when mentions of it were scrubbed from the Treasury Department’s website during a redesign.
Then, that August, Mr. Mnuchin made clear that Tubman’s future on the bill was in doubt.
“People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he told CNBC. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we’ve got a lot more important issues to focus on.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, recently introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act and called on the Treasury Department to offer clarity on the status of the $20 bill. The legislation, if passed, would direct the department to place the likeness of Tubman on $20 Federal Reserve notes printed after Dec. 31, 2020.
“There is no excuse for the administration’s failure to make this redesign a priority,” Ms. Shaheen said. “Sadly, this delay sends an unmistakable message to women and girls, and communities of color, who were promised they’d see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.”
Supporters of the tribute act in the House — including Representatives Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, and John Katko, Republican of New York — also expressed frustration with the Trump administration over the delay.
“The administration’s decision to drag their feet and delay the redesign of the $20 until 2028 is unacceptable,” Mr. Cummings said in a statement. “Our currency must reflect the important role women, and especially women of color, have played in our nation’s history.”
Former Obama administration officials have been quiet about Tubman during the past two years, hopeful that Mr. Trump would forget about the plan and allow it to proceed.
Mr. Lew, through a spokeswoman, had no comment on Wednesday. But Gene Sperling, the former director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, assailed Mr. Mnuchin on Twitter for embracing Mr. Trump’s divisiveness.
Mr. Trump has frequently described Jackson, whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office, as a populist hero who reminds him of himself. Two months into his presidency, Mr. Trump stopped to lay a wreath at Jackson’s tomb at the Hermitage, his plantation in Nashville. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Mr. Trump told a crowd gathered there. “Does that sound familiar?”
The delay comes three years after Mr. Mnuchin’s predecessor, Jacob J. Lew, announced plans for a sweeping and symbolic redrawing of the currency that would see Tubman replace the slaveholding Jackson on the face of the note.
