By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) – U.S. Democratic senators on Thursday urged the Trump administration to revive a plan to place anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department was no longer pursuing the redesign.
The Obama administration announced in 2016 that Tubman, who was born into slavery in the early 1820s and went on to help hundreds of enslaved people escape, would replace the seventh U.S. President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
But Bessent said earlier this month that the Treasury Department was “not at present” planning to put Tubman on the bill. Tubman would have been the first African American on the face of U.S. paper currency.
The decision halts a decade-long effort that had bipartisan support and comes as some administration officials push to put President Donald Trump’s image on a proposed $250 bill, a move that would require an act of Congress.
“The process to celebrate Tubman through our currency included extensive public engagement and bipartisan recognition of her extraordinary contributions to our nation, but your recent decision ignores that and abandons years of work at Treasury to honor her legacy,” a group of senators led by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote in a letter to Bessent.
“We urge you to immediately reconsider and resume plans to create the new bill without further delay,” they wrote, asking Bessent to explain what informed the decision.
The letter was first shared with Reuters.
No new person has been put on U.S. paper currency since 1928, but some officials in the current Trump administration have sought to put Trump’s face on a proposed $250 bill to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence.
The Treasury Department has acknowledged that such a move would require Congress to pass legislation to allow living persons to appear on U.S. paper currency. A $1 coin bearing Trump’s image to commemorate the U.S. 250th anniversary is now in production, which was authorized by a 2020 commemorative coin law that Trump signed during his first term.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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