Harriet Tubman $20 bill redesign postponed

A new version of the $20 bill, featuring Underground Railroad and anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman, will not be released in 2020 as planned.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that the bill likely wouldn’t be released until 2028. Its initial release date was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment – which gave women the right to vote.

“The primary reason we’ve looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues,” Mnuchin said during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. “It is my responsibility now to focus on what is the issue of counterfeiting and the security features. The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary’s down the road.”

He said the government would meet the security feature redesign in 2020, but the imagery issue will not come up until “most likely 2026.” Mnuchin also refused to say whether he supported the imagery redesign featuring Tubman.

Mnuchin added that the $50 and $100 bills with new features would come out beforehand.

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President Trump is said to have raised some objections to removing Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, from the $20 bill, suggesting during a town hall with NBC News that maybe Tubman should be featured on another denomination, like the $2 bill instead.

The bill would mark the first time a black woman would be featured on U.S. currency. The announcement was first made in 2016 by former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew after months of soliciting input.