In the grand scheme of things, a commemorative coin bearing Donald Trump’s face pales in comparison to the administration’s more significant authoritarian moves. But it is still worth examining, precisely because it shows how Trump has been getting away with so much else.
Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the design for a proposed $1 coin featuring Trump to honor the country’s 250th birthday. If issued, it will mark the first time a living president has appeared on a U.S. coin in a century.
The coin may be unlawful. It breaks with a tradition dating to George Washington. And outside of the most hardcore Trump supporters and rare coin collectors, it probably will be unpopular.
None of that is likely to stop the Mint from producing it.
The pattern is familiar. America began with a clear rule: no presidents on coins. But narrow exceptions over the years, often well intentioned, undermined it until Trump finally broke through almost all the remaining guardrails.
When the fledgling federal government began minting coins in 1792, some senators proposed putting Washington on them. But the House — and Washington himself — rejected the idea as too similar to the monarchy the country had just fought to escape. One representative called it “a stamp of Royalty.”
Instead, the Coinage Act required an image “emblematic of liberty.” For more than a century, regular U.S. coins generally featured Liberty, usually portrayed as a classical goddess.
The first exception came in 1900, when the Mint issued a commemorative coin featuring George Washington alongside the Marquis de Lafayette to raise money for a statue of Lafayette in Paris. Then, in 1909, the Mint abandoned its 115-year practice for regular-circulation coins and put Abraham Lincoln on the cent.
In retrospect, that was a mistake.
Lincoln seemed like an easy exception. He had been dead for more than four decades, and the coin marked the centennial of his birth. But once American coins could honor one president, the question was no longer whether presidents belonged on the nation’s money. It was which presidents deserved the honor — and when.
It didn’t take long for that distinction to be tested.
In 1926, Calvin Coolidge appeared beside Washington on a commemorative half-dollar for the country’s sesquicentennial. It was the first time a sitting president had appeared on a U.S. coin. The coin was a flop. More than 859,000 of the 1 million produced were returned unsold and melted down.
But the practice kept expanding. Washington appeared on the quarter in 1932, Thomas Jefferson on the nickel in 1938 and Franklin Roosevelt on the dime in 1946, less than a year after his death, in honor of his connection to the March of Dimes campaign against polio.
In 1964, barely four months after he was assassinated, John F. Kennedy appeared on the half-dollar. The Eisenhower dollar followed in 1971, two years after his death. By then, presidents had displaced the old Liberty designs from every denomination of regular U.S. coin.
Sometimes Congress specifically authorized these changes. Other times the Treasury Department made them on its own.
Eventually, Congress tried to draw a new line. The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 created a series of dollar coins honoring every former president, in the order they served, but required the president to have been dead for at least two years. The new dollar coins were intended for circulation, but Americans largely did not use them. By 2011, the government had more than 1.4 billion sitting in storage.
Then, in 2020, Trump signed a law authorizing new $1 coins with designs “emblematic” of the country’s 250th anniversary. The law does not expressly allow a living president on a coin. In fact, it bars a living person’s portrait on the reverse side. But Treasury is citing it as permission to put Trump’s face on the front, while arguing that the separate two-year rule for presidential dollars does not apply.
That argument might not hold up in court, but it may not have to. A previous challenge stumbled on the basic problem of standing. To sue, someone must show that they were actually harmed by the coin being minted. That’s hard to argue, even though the coin definitely hurts American ideals.
The original principle was simple: America’s money should honor lofty ideals of freedom, not individual leaders. Over time, that principle became a series of narrower rules, each with its own exceptions. Trump has found one more technicality that may all but erase the original rule.
“No presidents on coins” has become “Every former president gets a coin after death, unless the country is celebrating an anniversary.”
It’s hard to see the audience for the coin.
It’s hard to see the audience for the coin outside of Trump himself. The Coolidge coin was a dud. So were the presidential dollars. (The only place I’ve even found them recently is D.C. Metro machines when they give change.) There is no polling yet on the Trump coin, but Americans broadly oppose Trump putting his signature on U.S. currency and his portrait on passports. It would not be surprising if the Mint is left with a lot of unwanted Trump coins too.
Few presidents before Trump would have tried to put their own face on U.S. money while still in office. One meaningful distinction remains: Trump’s coins may have a circulating finish and be legal tender, but the Mint is selling them in collector rolls, not distributing them to banks for everyday use.
The coins can be spent, but at a cost of $1.55 to $2.44 apiece, depending on whether you buy a a 100-coin bag or a 25-coin roll, there is little reason to do so — unless an enterprising billionaire decides to curry favor with Trump by releasing a few into circulation.
That is the last line to cross. Once a sitting president’s face begins turning up in ordinary change, the country will have fully abandoned a norm set by Washington himself. Trump may be the one to take that final step, but he will not have done it alone.
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