Ranking Member Morelle Leads House Democrats in Defeating Republicans’ Partisan Museum Bill
WASHINGTON – Today, Rep. Joe Morelle (NY-25), the top Democrat on the Committee on House Administration, led House Democrats in defeating Republicans’ partisan museum bill that would have allowed President Trump to unilaterally overrule the Smithsonian Institution and Congress in choosing his own museum site — further delaying construction of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
During debate on the House floor earlier today, Ranking Member Morelle pressed the Speaker to move forward with the previously bipartisan version of the bill that would ensure women’s history is properly told and the museum has a place on the National Mall. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum is long overdue, and it deserves a place on the National Mall.” Morelle continued, “let the historians and experts do the work of telling the full and complex story of American women. This legislation does the opposite. It takes a bill – the narrow purpose of which is to specify a museum location – and throws even more uncertainty into that very question. It makes no sense.”
Democratic Women’s Caucus Chairwoman Teresa Leger Fernández (NM-03) issued the following statement after today’s vote.
“Today, the House proved that the Women’s History Museum does not belong to Trump. It belongs to the women whose blood, sweat, and tears paint the picture of America. Women deserve to tell our own story. That is why the Democratic Women’s Caucus and House Democrats worked tirelessly to block the radical, divisive Republican amendments to the Women’s History Museum bill that gave Trump and his ballroom buddies control. The House’s loud rejection of this partisan bill is a signal that we need to return to the original bipartisan version that honors the diverse contributions women made to this country. This fight is rooted in the shared belief that women’s history and women’s stories are integral to who we are as a nation,” said Chairwoman Leger Fernández.
Both Ranking Member Morelle and Chairwoman Leger Fernández opposed this version of the bill that failed on the House floor today because it differs from the original legislation, with 231 cosponsors, in four primary ways:
- It omitted the National Museum of the American Latino, which has been paired with the Women’s History Museum since they were authorized together in 2020.
- It granted the President unprecedented, unilateral, unchecked authority to disregard the Smithsonian’s recommended site—for any reason, or no reason at all— and to pick his own site for the museum.
- It handed control over design and construction to boards stacked with political loyalists who have already shown they will rubber-stamp whatever the President wants as Americans can clearly see in the pile of rubble that used to be the White House East Wing.
- It inserted an ideological poison pill intended to dictate what the museum can and cannot say about women’s history.
Earlier this week, Ranking Member Morelle delivered remarks during a Rules Committee hearing in fierce opposition to moving the unnecessarily partisan women’s museum bill forward for a vote on the House floor.
Last month, Chair Leger Fernández led the Democratic Women’s Caucus letter to Speaker Mike Johnson that expressed “deep disappointment that House Republicans have derailed a years-long, bipartisan effort to advance the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and National Museum of the American Latino.” Ranking Member Morelle co-signed that letter because, as he said during the Committee on House Administration’s markup of this bill in March, “I am very disappointed the majority has needlessly politicized what has, for years, been a bipartisan and patriotic process.”
The bill received bipartisan opposition with a final vote of 204-216.
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