When the long-misspelled name of Seraph Young Ford — a Utahn and the first woman to legally vote in the U.S. — was corrected on her headstone at Arlington National Cemetery, then-state Sen. Deidre Henderson flew to Washington for the occasion.
Now after military news site Task & Purpose reported Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration had pulled a section for notable women buried at Arlington off the cemetery’s website, now-Lt. Gov. Henderson, a Republican, is calling on the commander in chief to “please bring back our history.”
“We don’t celebrate these women because they are women,” Henderson wrote in a seven-post thread on X, tagging @realDonaldTrump, Thursday evening. “We celebrate them because of who they were, what they did, what they overcame, and what they mean to us. We see ourselves in them. They shouldn’t be deleted simply because they are women.”
The deletion comes as part of a larger effort by the White House to scrub any pages that it sees as tied to diversity, equity and inclusion values from government websites.
Henderson posted Thursday’s thread only a few months after she returned to Washington and stood alongside other Republican officials to celebrate the unveiling of a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, the first woman elected to a state senate. The statue of Hughes Cannon now represents Utah in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
Amid the federal push against DEI, Utah has passed its own laws barring such programs at government institutions and changed its policies to do away with women-focused initiatives.
In the final hours of this year’s annual legislative session, lawmakers voted to repeal the Women in the Economy Commission meant to improve gender equity in the state — a category in which Utah has frequently placed last in the country.
Thursday isn’t the first time Henderson has expressed hesitation to support the policies put forward by the head of her party. Before the November election, in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Henderson declined to endorse Trump or then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I have a real struggle with people who do know better and should know better at the top of Republican politics, who are sowing doubt and chaos and confusion for political gain — no matter who it is,” Henderson told The Tribune in September. “And yeah, it’s been starting at the top, but it’s also trickling down through the ranks, and anybody who participates in that is not doing their country any service.”
A couple months before those remarks, her running mate Gov. Spencer Cox announced he would back Trump — a departure from his past criticism of the president. Cox came under fire after both his and Trump’s campaign used a graveside visit at Arlington to rally support, a move the governor later apologized for.
As Utah’s top election official, and just the second woman in the state to hold the position, Henderson has a miniature of a mural of Seraph Young Ford casting her ballot hanging on the wall next to her office’s door.
“We have salvaged their stories from the dustbin of time. We have brushed them off and shined light on women and stories that deserve to be told,” Henderson wrote in her posts directed at the White House, finishing, “Mr. President, give us back our history.”
