The Biden administration is looking at ways to speed up the process of putting Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill after the effort stalled under the Trump administration.
“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriett Tubman on the front of the $20 notes,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing with reporters.
“It’s important that our notes, our money … reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that,” she added. “So we’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
The Treasury Department announced in April 2016, during the Obama administration, that Tubman would replace former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. Then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said at the time that a design for the new bills featuring the civil rights icon could be unveiled in 2020, in time for the centennial of the passage of women’s suffrage.
But the initiative hit a wall under the Trump administration. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers in 2019 that the effort to put Tubman on the $20 bill would be delayed until 2028.
Former President Trump himself had expressed opposition to putting Tubman on the $20 bill at the time it was first announced, calling it “pure political correctness” during the 2016 campaign.