One signature in the Rose Garden wiped out the White House women’s health initiative Jill Biden led as first lady.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, at a Rose Garden ceremony, creating a new federal women’s health division with First Lady Melania Trump beside him.
The order gives the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 90 days to stand up a Women’s Health Division. It also sets up a task force at the White House that will knit together federal efforts on women’s health, with the health and human services secretary and the White House chief of staff sharing the lead.
Trump’s order also revokes two Biden-era directives. Jill Biden, as first lady, championed one of them, a March 2024 executive order on advancing women’s health research. The other is a November 2023 memorandum that created the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which she led.
Melania Trump’s Hand in the Order
Melania Trump helped shape both the order and the task force, consulting physicians, White House officials, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the president. Her role followed a series of meetings with federal health officials.
“Beginning today we will change the reality of women’s health,” she said at the signing.
Her second-term portfolio has centered on improving foster care systems and expanding access to technology and artificial intelligence in education. Her signature effort during the first presidency was Be Best, which focused on child well-being, safe social media use and reducing drug abuse.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will run the task force with Kennedy. Wiles recently completed treatment for breast cancer.
The task force was set to meet for the first time Monday, Oct. 19, the same day as the signing. Its roster includes officials from the Agriculture, Labor, Education and Veterans Affairs departments. Four health agencies also send representatives: NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Outside voices from women’s health, technology, academia, the private sector and philanthropy may be consulted by the co-chairs.
An NIH institute or center will house the new division, which is to work alongside the agency’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, a unit established in 1990. The order tells the division to examine research on conditions that have gone understudied, to align efforts across the stages of women’s lives, and to bring more women and girls into clinical trials. NIH already requires researchers to treat sex as a biological variable, and the order presses for tighter accountability in how that policy is applied.
The order names heart disease, cancer, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease among the research areas, along with autoimmune conditions, osteoporosis, mental health and chronic pain, and endometriosis, fibroids, infertility, maternal health and menopause. The needs it describes run from infancy and childhood on through pregnancy, midlife and aging. Officials at the White House say the goal is tighter coordination and a quicker path from research to clinical care, with the division pushing findings into prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Where the Biden Billion Was Spread
The Biden initiative drew nearly $1 billion in federal funding, though never as a single pot of money. Commitments and investments were spread across agencies, including a $200 million pledge from NIH, $100 million from ARPA-H and a $500 million commitment announced by the Defense Department.
The Biden administration asked Congress for a $12 billion women’s health research fund. Lawmakers never approved the request.
Trump’s order sets no funding target of its own. The Department of Health and Human Services is directed to pay the task force’s administrative costs, and the order’s language makes the work subject to available appropriations.
“Who the Hell Wouldn’t”
The signing amounted to a historic action, Trump said, and he praised his wife’s work, saying she had accomplished a great deal. He then went off script, talking about White House renovations, including the patio stone now covering the former Rose Garden lawn.
Returning to women’s health, the president said he was surprised that some of the order’s requirements were not already in place. He recalled asking Melania Trump whether the government really lacked such a division.
“Who the hell wouldn’t have a women’s health division?” he said.
What Jill Biden Called Heartbreaking
Jill Biden has not responded publicly to the Oct. 19 order. Months earlier, she lamented cuts to women’s health research.
An interviewer on MS NOW’s "Morning Joe" asked her Tuesday, June 2, 2026, how it felt to watch her husband’s work undone, and she singled out the cuts to women’s health funding: “the research money for women’s health — something that I’m really interested in — it’s heartbreaking.”
The ceremony came weeks before the Nov. 3 elections, with Trump’s job approval slipping, including among women. Independent women backed him at a rate of about 4 in 10 during the 2024 election against Democrat Kamala Harris, AP-NORC polls found. That share dropped to roughly a quarter by the opening months of 2026. Democrats went on to win control of both the Senate and the House on Nov. 3.