Women's museum bill defeated in House

Nina Heller, CQ-Roll Call on May 21, 2026

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WASHINGTON — A once-bipartisan effort broke down Thursday as the House rejected a bill to pave the way for construction of a Smithsonian museum honoring women.

Previously championed by both sides of the aisle, the legislation saw last-minute changes at a House Administration Committee markup in March that led Democrats to withdraw their backing. The new version would prohibit exhibits from including transgender women or girls, as well as give the final say on location to President Donald Trump.

“A museum about women, fought for and supported by women, should not be controlled by one man,” leaders of the Democratic Women’s Caucus said in a statement earlier this week.

The bill would allow the museum to be built within the reserve of the National Mall, an area where construction is tightly controlled. Although the bill names the South Monument site across from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, it would also give the president the ability to “designate an alternative site” at his discretion. Democrats have decried the changes as a “poison pill” that derailed years of work.

The floor vote this week was supposed to be a chance for Republicans to position themselves as defenders of women’s rights and to paint their opponents as unsympathetic to the cause.

“They claim, the other side, to be the party of women — yet it is the Republican Party that introduced the 19th amendment,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., on the floor earlier Thursday, referring to the change last century that allowed American women to vote. “And yes, there’s a Republican president today that has authorized the women’s history museum, and it will be the Republican majority in Congress that gets this done.”

But Republicans couldn’t stay united to pass the bill on their own, with several of their members breaking away to vote with Democrats to defeat the effort. GOP leaders circulated around the chamber, trying to convince the holdouts.

After roughly an hour, leaders gave up and closed the vote at 204-216.

Now the path forward is unclear. The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum was originally authorized by Congress and signed into law by Trump in 2020, alongside plans for a Museum of the American Latino. Both museums have been stuck in limbo as they wait for Congress to give the go-ahead on where they will be built. Lawmakers had once hoped to see the two construction bills packaged together, but they became separate as anti-immigration and anti-DEI rhetoric increased over the last few years.

And Democrats say they worry about future interference by the president in the Smithsonian museums, especially after Trump issued an executive order last year promising to root out “divisive narratives.”

Until Congress acts, construction of the women’s museum cannot begin on the National Mall, leaving it stalled for now.

“This bill used to be a bipartisan success story,” Rep. Emily Randall, D-Wash, said on the floor.