Joyce Beatty

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has confirmed the Trump administration has scrapped a decade-old plan to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill, drawing sharp criticism from Democrats including Rep. Joyce Beatty of Columbus.

When Spectrum News asked directly on Monday whether Treasury still intends to put Tubman on the $20, Bessent said, “We are not at present.” He did not elaborate.

The response marks the clearest confirmation yet that the redesign championed by the Democratic administration of former President Barack Obama has been halted. Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced the plan in 2016, saying Tubman would replace President Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder, on the face of the bill.

Tubman escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and returned to the South at least a dozen times to guide more enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. She then served as a scout and spy for Union forces during the Civil War and spent her later years campaigning for women’s suffrage.

Lew said at the time, “Given the vital role women have played to build our nation, it’s only right that our currency reflect their contributions.” The redesign was originally supposed to reach circulation by 2020.

The plan stalled during the first administration of President Donald Trump, who admires Jackson. Trump has put portraits of Jackson in the Oval Office. As a candidate for president in 2016, he called the move to replace Jackson on the $20 bill “pure political correctness.”

While the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden pledged to speed up the bill’s production, it was never printed.

The dispute over the $20 bill is playing out against a broader fight over the administration’s approach to race and diversity policy. In his first week back in office, Trump signed a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and beyond, ordering agencies to terminate DEI offices and equity-related grants and contract.

Beatty has repeatedly introduced legislation that would require the Treasury Department to put Tubman on the $20 bill. At a House Financial Services Committee hearing last year, she asked Bessent about the redesign status and was dismayed when he told her he’d have staff reply to her question.

“No, I want you to get back to me because, see, there seems to be an issue when it comes to things that affect people of color or people who live in poverty,” she responded.

Beatty expressed further consternation in a statement released after Bessent said his department doesn’t plan to Tubman on U.S. currency. She vowed to continue her efforts to make it happen.

“Donald Trump may try to delay progress, but he cannot stop it,” Beatty’s statement said. “Harriet Tubman’s place in the American story is permanent, and I will fight with every breath until her face is on the $20 bill.”

Bessent’s Treasury Department is treating a different currency change with far more urgency. The administration has signaled it is ready to move quickly on a new $250 bill featuring Trump’s image to mark the country’s 250th anniversary, pending congressional approval.