Republicans tried to make a proposed women’s museum transphobic...

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Republicans tried to make a proposed women's museum transphobic. Democrats put a stop to it.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/05/republicans-tried-to-make-a-proposed-womens-museum-transphobic-democrats-put-a-stop-to-it/ 🔗

Greg Owen (22 May 2026)

The Democratic Women's Caucus on Thursday helped end a transphobic bill seeking to fund the building of the Smithsonian Institution's new Women's History Museum, after Republicans added language in a bill funding it to ban inclusion of "any biological male as a female."

Lawmakers voted 216-204 to reject the bill. Six Republicans joined all Democrats in opposition, Politico reports.

The legislation was on track to pass just weeks ago with bipartisan support: 127 Democrats and 103 Republicans cosponsored the bill funding the museum's construction.

But in March, Republican members on the Committee on House Administration rewrote the bill, adding provisions that state that only "biological women" could be featured in the museum, and granting President Trump near total authority over its location, construction, and content.

Democratic women revolted.

In a letter from the Democratic Women's Caucus and House Democratic Caucus addressed to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA), lawmakers blasted the new language.

That provision is "clearly" intended to "target transgender women and girls," the Congress members said, but it also "invites arbitrary enforcement and could be used to challenge the inclusion of any woman or girl a politician deems not 'feminine' enough,'" they added.

"The design and location of a museum about women, fought for and supported by women, should not be controlled by one man and his loyalists — particularly not a man who has been found liable for sexual assault, and regularly denigrates women based on physical appearance, among other repulsive behaviors," they said, referencing the 2023 civil court decision regarding journalist E. Jean Carroll.