Why Democrats have soured on a women’s history museum bill set for a House vote

Republicans amended the bill to say President Trump may pick an alternative site for the museum and specified it could include only “biological women.”

A decadelong bipartisan effort to build a women’s history museum in Washington is nearing the finish line, but a bill to make it happen now has a lot less Democratic support than it did just a month ago.

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

The House is set to vote Thursday on legislation that would secure a location on the National Mall for the previously approved Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. Recent GOP revisions, though, prompted scores of Democrats to say they won’t vote for the measure in its current form.

The legislation, authored in February 2025 by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., has 231 co-sponsors, including 127 Democrats. At the end of last year, the bill had such strong bipartisan backing that even Republicans had grown frustrated with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for not bringing it to the floor.