Smithsonian Women’s History Museum Plans Hit Snag After Democrats Decry Amendment Limiting Subject Matter to ‘Biological Women’

After trying for years to pass a bill establishing a standalone women’s history museum at the Smithsonian, it appears another snag has been hit in Congress. Republicans are including an amendment to bar displays and other presentations featuring biological men who identify as women — something Democrats are calling a poison pill that they won’t support. Congress originally approved the creation of a national women’s history museum in 2020, though passing a bill to ensure the museum is built on the National Mall is more difficult. The House is now going through the process of approving space on the Mall for both the women’s history museum, as well as a museum dedicated to Latino Americans. The bill may now suddenly be facing an uphill climb after Congresswoman Mary Miller, a fiercely conservative lawmaker from rural Illinois, successfully placed an amendment on the bill to bar the museum from presenting anyone other than biological women as women. The bill now states that the museum must be dedicated only to “preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements, and live experiences of biological women.” The bill further mandates that the new museum will not be allowed to “identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as female.”When the bill came before the House Administration Committee on Wednesday, all Democrats voted against it, citing the language to preclude biological males from being featured as women. “You can’t make this up,” the Republican Women’s Caucus said in a statement after the vote. “House Democrats just voted against the Bipartisan American Women’s History Museum — despite 230+ cosponsors — because it focuses on the heroic stories of biological women. During women’s history month.”“Democrats in the House Administration Committee just voted against my bill to build a Women’s History Museum on the National Mall because an amendment was adopted to ensure only biological women are exhibited,” Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis wrote on X. “What a way to celebrate #WomensHistoryMonth!”Before the committee voted to advance the bill, Ms. Miller spoke about her amendment, saying that it was important to focus on the contributions of biological women to America over the course of the last 250 years. “The accomplishments of real women should never be overshadowed by biological men pretending to be women,” Ms. Miller told her colleagues. The top Democrat on the committee, Congressman Joe Morelle, spoke out against Ms. Miller’s bill while praising Ms. Malliotakis’s work to finally get both the women’s history museum and the Latino history museum built on the mall. Mr. Morelle said he was “extremely disappointed” that Republicans decided to “politicize” the process. “It inserts a politically charged poison pill intended to dictate what the museum can and cannot say about women’s history,” Mr. Morelle said of Ms. Miller’s amendment. “Let’s be honest [about] what’s happening here: if the goal were to truly move the museum forward, we would not be abandoning the bipartisan process that has brought us to the brink of construction. We would not be considering a bill with an ideological poison pill.”Mr. Morelle said he would oppose the bill for a number of other reasons, as well. He says the Latino history museum creation should be moved in tandem with the women’s history museum, and argues that Mr. Trump should be required to build the museums where the Smithsonian recommends they be built, rather than giving him latitude to choose the sites.Mr. Morelle further argued that the museums should not be designed by the boards filled with Mr. Trump’s own “political loyalists.”A Republican, Congresswoman Laurel Lee, pushed back against Mr. Morelle’s comments, saying that it was critical to honor the contributions of women. “Museums are not simply a collection of objects. They are places where we remember who we are, where we came from, and the values that guided our country forward,” Ms. Lee told her colleagues. Now that the bill has been approved by the Administration Committee, it is expected to head to the House floor in the next few weeks, though Ms. Miller’s amendment could become a problem once the bill is taken up in the Senate. In that chamber, it will take 60 votes to end debate and pass the bill.

Smithsonian Women’s History Museum Plans Hit Snag After Democrats Decry Amendment Limiting Subject Matter to ‘Biological Women’

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