President Donald Trump signed an executive order on women’s health alongside First Lady Melania Trump in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026, creating a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House Women’s Health Task Force.
Then came the part the internet kept replaying. Trump, 80, held up the signed document for the room to see, reached over for his wife’s hand and leaned in. Melania Trump, 56, turned her head far to the side, so the kiss glanced off the side of her head. The president held on to her hand and patted it several times. Journalist Aaron Rupar posted the clip on X, where it drew jokes and body-language analysis from viewers; the couple was later seen kissing.
The ceremony was a rare public appearance together for the couple.
The Pen Handoff That Drew Laughs
Moments earlier, Trump had signed the order with a Sharpie and pronounced himself pleased with the result. After he handed the marker to his wife, Trump told the crowd, “I don’t know if her signature means anything,” drawing uncomfortable laughs from some guests. He then added, “I think it does.”
Melania smiled and replied, “Yours is the most important.” Her name carries no legal weight on the document. Afterward, the couple gave pens to women in the audience and posed for a photo.
Melania’s Idea, Now an NIH Division
The first lady, who conceived the initiative, spoke before her husband. She said the order would make progress on five objectives: steering research money toward cures for diseases that disproportionately affect women, using artificial intelligence to speed discoveries, accelerating new therapeutics, delivering breakthroughs at prices women can afford, and making conversations about women’s health less taboo. Trump credited her with the idea for the division, telling the crowd she had pointed out that NIH did not have one and that he saw no sense in the gap.
The order directs the creation of the division within 90 days, inside an appropriate NIH institute or center. It will work with, rather than replace, the Office of Research on Women’s Health, which NIH established in 1990. The division’s duties include coordinating research, improving data on how health outcomes differ by sex and getting more women and girls into clinical trials. The order singles out conditions including heart disease, cancer, endometriosis, infertility and menopause as needing more research.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will co-chair the task force, whose members also include the education, labor and veterans affairs secretaries and the heads of the EPA, FDA, CDC and NIH. Wiles was diagnosed with breast cancer in March, stayed in the job through treatment and announced in September that she is cancer-free. Trump praised her from the lectern, calling her a tremendous fighter. The Department of Health and Human Services must fund the task force’s administrative costs, and the co-chairs may hold public hearings, meetings and roundtables.
The Money Question Stays Open
The order sets no research-spending target, and implementation is subject to available appropriations. NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in an interview on “CBS Mornings” that the amount of money behind the effort is still undetermined, though new funding will very likely go to topics the first lady wants prioritized, among them endometriosis and menopause.
Alicia Jackson, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, told the same program that her agency expects to make several announcements over the course of the year putting $100 million to $200 million toward large efforts affecting women.
The order also revokes a March 2024 executive order and a November 2023 presidential memorandum on women’s health research. It comes from an administration that, during Trump’s second term, has sought to cut NIH grants for research on diversity-related topics, according to Reuters.
