first lady

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday directed the federal government to bolster federal research into women’s health, a move pushed by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

The Republican president signed an executive order that creates a new women’s health division at the National Institutes of Health and a White House task force to focus on the issue. That panel was set to hold its first meeting Monday after the Trumps held a Rose Garden signing ceremony.

“Beginning today we will change the reality of women’s health,” Melania Trump said. “Previous generations fought for women’s rights. Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.”

The president, who spoke after his wife, said the order will “promote new research and really go after the understudied diseases affecting women.” The order is also intended to promote diagnostic technology and improve treatment.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who recently completed treatment for breast cancer, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will lead the White House task force. Donald Trump said the task force will coordinate with various federal agencies and programs. The order does not include specific funding goals.

The initiative comes after a series of meetings the first lady had with federal health officials.

The president called it a “historic action” and praised the first lady’s work.

“She’s accomplished so much,” he said before pivoting into unscripted commentary on White House renovations, including the patio stone that now covers what was once the Rose Garden lawn.

Shifting back to women’s health, the president expressed surprise that some of the order’s requirements had not already been imposed.

“Who the hell wouldn’t have a women’s health division?” he said, after recalling that he’d asked Melania Trump, “Are you sure they don’t have that?”

The executive order calls for targeting maternal health, mental health and endometriosis. It also mentions other health concerns and diseases, including Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, heart disease and stroke.

Melania Trump helped shape the order and the task force in consultation with physicians, White House officials, Kennedy and the Republican president. The initiative adds a new dimension to her policy portfolio as first lady.

In Donald Trump’s second term, the first lady has focused on improving foster care systems and expanding technology and artificial-intelligence access in education. In Trump’s first presidency, the first lady’s signature initiative, Be Best, focused on child well-being, safe social media use and reducing drug abuse.

The White House ceremony comes weeks before Nov. 3 elections and as Donald Trump’s job approval ratings have declined, including among women.

About 4 in 10 independent women supported Trump during the 2024 election against Democrat Kamala Harris and in the pre-presidency period, according to AP-NORC polls. That dropped to around a quarter in the opening months of this midterm election year, the period marked by Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown in U.S. cities and the opening weeks of the Iran war.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 23, 2026 5:09 PM PT

A two-part docuseries about Melania Trump arrives later this year, the first lady revealed Wednesday. The new project follows the January release of director Brett Ratner’s documentary, which made $16.7 million worldwide at the box office and was universally panned by critics.

“It will come out this year, and it will be very different what is in the movie,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” ahead of her appearance to ring the New York Stock Exchange opening bell. “It’s more [like a] conversation one on one with me.”

Trump indicated that the docuseries will cover new ground.

“So when I was traveling and doing all of the filming, the director was asking me questions, and there’s some private questions that I will answer that people never heard before,” she said.

The Times has reached out to Amazon Studios for more information on the project, which does not appear in press materials, though Ratner teased the new “chapters” in an Aug. 11 Instagram post.

“Here we go again….” the director wrote. “The saga continues …. can’t wait to share with everyone around the world the next two chapters of MELANIA, THE DOCU SERIES!”

Ratner’s film followed the first lady in the 20 days leading up to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration, promising “exclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments” as Melania “orchestrates inauguration plans, navigates the complexities of the White House transition, and moves her family back to the Nation’s Capital.”

Critics, however, found the cinematic experience lacking.

“I’m hesitant to call ‘Melania’ propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well,” Times film critic Amy Nicholson wrote in a February review. “If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed. Yet somehow, ‘Melania’ is exactly the film that the first lady wanted to make — her company was paid $40 million for the rights to this self-greenlit production — and no one around her warned that it was a very expensive bad idea.”

“Melania” was Ratner’s first film since six women accused him of sexual assault in 2017. In February 2026, The Times reported that the “Rush Hour” filmmaker appeared in the unsealed Epstein files in photos with unidentified women and the financier, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

In addition to the initial $40 million Amazon MGM Studios paid to license the project, the marketing and promotion budget was reportedly another $35 million.