Redesign of $20 bill with Harriet Tubman is pushed back

A $20 bill redesign that would feature Harriet Tubman will not be unveiled next year as planned, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said Wednesday.

Instead, it will be pushed back several years as the department focuses instead on improving security features, he said.

“The primary reason we’ve looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues,” Mnuchin said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, adding that the department would focus on imagery later. “Based upon this, the $20 bill will now not come out until 2028. The $10 bill and the $50 bill will come out with new features beforehand.”

The redesign was timed to coincide with the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment establishing women’s suffrage.

Mnuchin announced the news in response to questioning from Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat and the first African-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

When asked whether he supported the decision to put Tubman on the $20 bill in the first place, Mnuchin would not say.

“I’ve made no decision as it relates to that, and that decision won’t be made, as I’ve said, until most likely 2026,” he said.

The original decision to include Tubman in the redesign was announced by Jacob Lew, who was Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, in 2016, following months of public debate.

Under the redesign, Tubman — an abolitionist, Union spy, and a former slave — would have replaced Andrew Jackson, the slaveholding seventh president of the United States known as much for persecuting Native Americans as for war heroics.

Her portrait was to appear on the front of the bill, with Jackson’s image pushed to the back.

President Donald Trump has expressed deep admiration for Jackson, a wealthy populist who appealed to working-class voters.

At the time of the 2016 announcement, Trump described Tubman as “fantastic” but said that he believed the redesign was “pure political correctness.” Instead, he suggested that her portrait be put on the $2 bill or another bill.

Women have appeared on U.S. currency a handful of times, often on seldom-used $1 coins.