The Treasury Department’s decision to put President Trump’s face on the currency breaks with a long-standing tradition set by George Washington.
U.S. Mint releases new coins to commemorate 250th anniversary
A new coin from the U.S. Mint has been released to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Political battles in Washington are now being fought over pennies, not millions of dollars.
The Treasury Department is preparing to print President Donald Trump’s face on the $1 coin to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Districts honoring national heroes from the abolitionist, suffrage, and civil rights eras will be abolished and replaced by early white settlers and revolutionaries.
Congressional Democrats have criticized the move, saying it should reflect the full scope of U.S. history, not a living president.
Like many policies under the Trump administration, the U.S. Mint’s decision last year to display the president’s face on its currency broke with a long-standing tradition set by President George Washington of not displaying living presidents on currency.
Some lawmakers are now questioning the legality of the Trump coins and broader moves by the Mint, including a decision last year to eliminate a memorial district honoring abolitionists, civil rights activists and suffragists.
In a Jan. 26 letter, five Democratic senators and independent Maine Sen. Angus King asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the creation of President Trump’s design and reinstate the previously abolished department.
“Putting a bust of a living president on coins celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence sends a message to America and the world that is inconsistent with who we are as a nation,” they said in the letter.
But a representative from the U.S. Mint said at a Jan. 22 meeting of the Commission on Fine Arts, the federal agency that reviews designs for monuments, memorials, coins and buildings in the nation’s capital, that the Treasury Department found the Trump coins “do not violate any laws.”
Is Trump Coin in the country’s future?
Members of President Trump’s recently appointed Art Commission weighed three classic designs featuring the president’s face at a meeting on January 22, despite looming legal questions over the casting method.
They voted to endorse President Trump’s profile as long as the president approves. One committee member noted that it had a “politician-like quality, right down to the hair.”
But at this point, it’s unclear whether the design will move forward.
Democratic lawmakers argue in the letter that President Trump’s $1 coin violates an 1886 law that requires currency and securities to bear “only the likeness of a deceased individual.”
“While busts of living monarchs and dictators have appeared on circulating coins worldwide, no living president has ever appeared on circulating U.S. coins,” they write, citing precedent in Washington.
During his lifetime, the first president refused to have his likeness printed on currency, believing it to be a “monarchy” and contrary to the country’s struggle for independence from Britain.
However, according to the American Numismatic Association, which deals with money-related artifacts, there is another living president depicted on the coin, Calvin Coolidge. 1926 Sesquicentennial 5 Dollars or 150th On Memorial Day, we featured Coolidge and Washington.
If the coin is minted, it would follow many other recent efforts by President Trump to put his name on national symbols, from the Kennedy Center to the Institute of Peace.
The Mint did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the legality of the Trump coins. At the Fine Arts Committee meeting, Megan Sullivan, acting director of the agency’s Office of Design Management, said Treasury attorneys determined that the Trump coin is legal under the Circulating Collected Coin Redesign Act.
Dispute over quarters?
A 2020 law allowed the Mint to create up to five different quarter-dollar designs to commemorate the $250.th At least one of these designs was required to be “symbolic of women or women’s contributions” to this country. The Mint was also authorized to create a new $1 coin “symbolizing the United States’ semi-quincentenary.”
Since then, a lengthy design process has lasted several years, including focus groups, public input, and a review of the coin’s design by an art commission and the Citizens’ Coinage Advisory Committee, a group established by Congress to advise the Treasury on coin design.
Finally, in October 2024, the committee recommended five coins to the Treasury Department, then under the Biden administration. One of them featured Frederick Douglass to commemorate the abolition of slavery. one introduced 19th An amendment to give women the right to vote. One civil rights coin depicts Ruby Bridges, who helped desegregate Louisiana schools when she was 6 years old. The other celebrated the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
However, those coins were not released in late 2025. Mr. Bessent, who is authorized by law to finalize the coin’s design, chose to replace the abolition, suffrage and civil rights movement coins with coins depicting the Mayflower Compromise, the American Revolution and the Gettysburg Address.
The coin’s redesign comes after President Trump signed an executive order focused on how history is presented, encouraging institutions to tell stories that uplift American history, a move criticized by historians as an attempt to “whitewash” the nation’s past.
In a Jan. 26 letter, Democratic lawmakers urge Bessent to reinstate the Abolition, Suffrage, and Civil Rights coin. They and some members of the Coin Advisory Board argue that the new design has not gone through the proper vetting required by law.
“Absent evidence that legal procedures were followed, the U.S. Mint’s announcement must be rejected and selected from properly approved original designs,” the group of senators wrote.
They claim that rather than showcasing the country’s 250 years of history, the design “covers only the first 87 years of the United States as a nation.”
Donald Scarinci, a member of the Numismatic Advisory Committee, confirmed to USA TODAY that the dispute appears to be “just a disagreement” over the coin’s design. But Scarinci said in an email that he sees the change more broadly: “It’s about the rule of law.”
