Women’s museum is latest divide in Trump bid to mold capital

WASHINGTON — Five New Jersey lawmakers voted against their own bill, legislation to forward the construction of a national women’s history museum, after Republicans rewrote the bill to block transgender people from being honored.

The House voted the bill down, 204-216, before breaking for Memorial Day recess. The amended legislation would also give President Donald Trump final approval for the location of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

“The original legislation was a commendable effort to recognize the immense contributions of women to America’s history,” Mike Shanahan, a spokesman for Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th), said in a statement to NJ Spotlight News.

“Sadly, some Republican politicians decided to further their ongoing culture war and amended it to create a divisive piece of legislation that the Congresswoman and many of her colleagues found deeply offensive to women,” Shanahan said.

Rep. Nellie Pou (D-9th) said Republicans “hijacked” the legislation, now relegated to legislative limbo.

During a committee vote in March, Republicans inserted text to bar transgender exhibits from being shown in the museum. The museum “may not identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as female,” according to the amendment, offered by Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois and ally of the president.

Along with Watson Coleman and Pou, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th), Nellie Pou (D-9th) and LaMonica McIver (D-10th) voted against the bill. All sponsored the original version. New Jersey Republicans Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) and Chris Smith (R-4th) voted for the legislation. Van Drew and Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), who did not vote, are co-sponsors.

‘Bad for the capital’

The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, a project years in the making, is just a recent target.

Trump and supporters on Capitol Hill have sought to curate what they want in the visual arts, music, performances, popular culture, and national and world history. The president has remodeled a lot around the capital in his second term:

• Banners of Trump’s face festoon the Labor and Justice departments.
• Ever the image-conscious real-estate mogul, Trump forced a takeover of the Kennedy Center, installing supporters of his on its board. His name is now chiseled into the performing arts complex and a short walk away, at the United States Institute of Peace, a small nonprofit think tank.
  

  Credit: (Benjamin J. Hulac/NJ Spotlight News)

• Trump proposed a National Garden of American Heroes to be built in Washington — Congress funded it with $40 million last year — of 250 statues of activists, business people, athletes, musicians, Founding Fathers and celebrities.
• Without approval from conservation groups, he directed the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to create a corporate-funded bunker and ballroom.
• He ordered the bottom of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial steps to be painted what he dubbed “American flag blue.”
• He is designing a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of military veterans and war heroes.
• He greenlit a military parade last summer, drawing tanks down Washington’s corridors and avenues.
• Trump mandated an IndyCar street race around the National Mall, to be held this summer, plus a UFC fight on the White House lawn, to be held June 14, his 80th birthday.

With the president’s support last summer, Republican governors deployed their states’ National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. — where many remain stationed, their hotel rooms, meals and daily expenses covered by taxpayers.

“They look great,” Trump said at the White House of the troops, who are barred from police work in the city and spend much of their days idling at subway stations, guns on hips and camouflage drawing attention to their presence. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday there will be a “surge” of National Guard personnel in the city this summer.

Credit: (Benjamin Hulac/NJ Spotlight News)

Van Drew, a Trump ally, last year led an effort to dismantle the almost 45-year-old White House Peace Vigil in Lafayette Park across from the president’s residence. The South Jersey congressman called the demonstration and its shelter tent  — part of what was thought to be the country’s longest-running peaceful political protest — an “encampment” that looked “bad for the capital.”

First Amendment

In an interview about the tent and its meaning, Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said it had been a vital political symbol.

“It was kind of an iconic part of walking by the White House,” Fallow said. “Under the First Amendment in America, you can criticize even the most powerful officials and you can do it right in front of the White House.”

The Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent is intended to force critical groups to change their action and language, Fallow said. “The goal of all of this is to get these organizations to change their speech or not express viewpoints that the government doesn’t like,” she said. “That’s dangerous and likely unconstitutional.”

After years of disagreement, Congress in 2020 authorized plans for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in conjunction with plans for the Museum of the American Latino. Factions of lawmakers had squabbled over where the two museums would be placed on the Mall, where space is in short supply.

Before Republicans added the amendment, support for the project was a rare spot of bipartisan cooperation in Congress.

“The accomplishments of real women should never be overshadowed,” said Miller, the amendment’s author.

Full control

Pou’s chief of staff, Ben Rich, said the congresswoman supports the bipartisan version and wants to see the women’s museum built.

“Unfortunately, the formerly bipartisan legislation to create this institution was hijacked by far-right wing House Republicans to give the Trump administration and its appointees control over the museum, its work, and its content,” Rich said by email. He added that the congresswoman urged Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who controls which bills get votes, to tee up the previous bill instead of the altered version.

“Before Speaker Johnson brought this new version of the bill on the floor, Rep. Pou joined many of her colleagues in calling on him to restore the previous bipartisan version of the bill, as well as advance the creation of the National Museum of the American Latino in tandem with this bill, yet he refused,” Rich said. “Given the administration’s attacks on the Smithsonian, this newly amended bill was unacceptable.”

Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican from New York and the underlying bill’s primary sponsor, said the changes were reasonable.

“Perhaps the party that is opposing a women’s history museum on the National Mall because they want to have transgender exhibits — maybe they are the ones who are trans-obsessed,” Malliotakis said during floor debate.

Democrats said Republicans sank a bill that had widespread support. “It was a simple bill. You kind of ruined it with your trans-obsession and your culture wars,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, who leads a bloc of Democratic women in the House.

In August 2025, White House officials wrote Lonnie Bunch, the head of the Smithsonian Institution, which houses an array of libraries, museums and the National Zoo, to announce a “review” of the broader Smithsonian network.

The White House later that month took issue with dozens of artifacts and artwork, including a pencil sketch of pandemic adviser Anthony Fauci, programing about “animated Latinos and Latinas with disabilities,” transgender subjects and a picture of the activist and author Angela Davis.