New York Congresswoman Democrat Carolyn Maloney's Manhattan district includes Trump Tower, making Maloney the primary advocate who is personally lobbying Trump himself and his senior administration officials to support legislation that would finally birth a Smithsonian museum dedicated to women's history on the National Mall.
Politico writes that Maloney was handing out folders of material on the museum, handing them out to Trump and his (few) top female advisors at a congressional picnic in June.
“I talked to Ivanka about it, I talked to Melania about it, I talked to Karen Pence about it, I talked to Kellyanne [Conway] about it,” Maloney said. “I handed it directly to the president and he said he would read it. I asked Kellyanne for advice on how to approach it. She said to talk to the president directly, she said she would not do it on my behalf.”
Maloney said she had another chance to bond with Conway on the dance floor last weekend at a star-studded party at Washington doyenne Lally Weymouth’s Hamptons summer home. “I thought, ‘Hey, this is my chance to lobby her,’” Maloney said of the party, which was also attended by George Soros, Steven Spielberg, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, among others. “I kept working her over.”
In 2014, President Obama approved the creation of a commission to evaluate the need and feasibility for creating the women's history museum, whose funding would come from private donors and not taxpayers.
“Right now, we’re only ten months into our brand new African-American Museum, and our next big capital project is a complete revitalization of the Air and Space Museum, which will be $650 million,” said Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas. “It would be very difficult for us to handle a new building right now.”
More feasible than a stand-alone women’s museum, St. Thomas said, was doing “a better job of telling the story of women’s history” across the existing museums. There's little doubt that a Hillary Clinton administration would be more receptive to a women's history museum.
In May 2017 Elle touched base with Maloney, who has served in the House since 1992 as part of the largest female contingent ever voted into the DC House of Representatives. Maloney, a life-long advocate of women's rights quickly bonded with then 10-term Democrat Patricia Schroeder who tells the story of her own arrival in DC. "Congress "is about Chivas Regal, thousand-dollar bills, Learjets, and beautiful women," one of Schroeder's male colleagues told her upon her arrival. "Why are you here?" Read on at Elle to learn more about Rep. Carolyn Maloney's women's-history-rich story.
