The Biden administration is looking to “speed up” the release of the Harriet Tubman $20 bills that were first initiated under President Barack Obama and delayed by the Trump administration.
“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes. It’s important that our notes, our money — if people don’t know what a note is — reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday. “We’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”
In 2016, the Obama administration approved a redesign of the $20 bill that would replace former U.S. President Andrew Jackson with Tubman, the formerly enslaved abolitionist who helped guide others to freedom through the Underground Railroad, on the $20 bill.
During his tenure, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin noncommittal about the release of the Tubman $20 bill; in 2019, he said that he was “not focused” on the redesign and that the new note would likely be delayed until 2028.
In 2016, during his campaign for the presidency, Trump also criticized the effort to replace Jackson on the bill with Tubman as “pure political correctness.”