The U.S. Treasury declined to confirm whether the Trump Administration still plans to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
In 2016, then-Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced that Harriet Tubman would be the face featured on a redesign of the $20 bill. The release of the new bill into circulation was far off even then—Lew said it would take more than 10 years to complete, with initial design released around 2020—but the bill’s eventual creation was a relative certainty. That appears to have changed under the Trump administration. In a letter to Congress released on Tuesday, Treasury official Drew Maloney did not commit to putting Tubman on the $20, though he did praise her work as an abolitionist hero. As the New York Times reported, Maloney wrote: “The redesign of the next currency series is still in the early stages, and neither the final designs nor all features have been finalized for the new notes.”
New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen made the inquiry into the status of the Tubman redesign, and was disappointed with what she saw as a waffling response. “I’ll continue to press the Treasury Department to expedite the redesign of the $20 bill and keep its promise to the American people,” she told the Times. If completed as planned, the new $20 would see Tubman replace Andrew Jackson—a favorite of President Trump—on the front of the bill, with Jackson’s visage moving to the back of the currency.