Mint is now offering $1 “gold” coins featuring Donald Trump’s face, marking only the second time in American history that a sitting president has appeared on currency. The coin, intended to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary, features the word “LIBERTY” printed above Trump’s scowling face, with the dates 1776 and 2026 joined by a dash printed underneath — an image that the commentariat suggests shows “liberty” dying under the president’s watch. The Treasury is also selling the coins at a more than 50 percent markup from their face value.
Rolls of 25 $1 coins are $61, and bags of 100 coins are $154.50. After the coin was first proposed last year, Democratic members of Congress and a bipartisan committee that reviews currency designs warned that the presence of a sitting president on American coinage would break from democratic norms — and amount to a dubious or outright illegal attempt to subvert federal laws against it. Mint officials under the Trump administration have argued that the coin adheres to 2020 law that grants the Treasury permission to mint $1 coins to mark the nation’s anniversary “with designs emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial.” The coins — which are made of zinc, manganese, nickel and copper — also depict an eagle holding an olive branch and arrows along with a banner that reads “E Pluribus Unum.” A shield with “250” appears in the center.
But federal law only allows “the portrait of a deceased individual” to appear on currency, a decades-old measure intended to reject the tradition of coinage that feature sitting British monarchs. Trump, however, signed the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act during his first term in 2021 to only ban living figures from appearing on “the reverse of any coin” in a commemorative series. Administration officials have also defended Trump’s image on the coin by pointing to a portrait of President Calvin Coolidge that appeared on a coin for the country’s 150th anniversary in 1926.
Last year, Democratic members of Congress introduced the Change Corruption Act to explicitly ban Trump from appearing on the $1 coin, which Senator Jeff Merkley called one of the president’s “authoritarian actions worthy of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.” “We must reject his efforts to dismantle our ‘We, The People’ republic and replace it with a strongman state by demanding strong accountability to prevent further abuse of taxpayer dollars,” he said in a statement at the time. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after the initial draft of a design was introduced, lawmakers warned that putting Trump’s face on a circulating coin “is not only inconsistent with congressional intent to honor 250 years of United States’ history, but also un-American.” Since taking office, Trump has launched an unprecedented blitz across federal agencies to get his name and visage on government buildings —and even passports — as the former real-estate mogul seeks to leave an imprint on the nation’s capital and its institutions before he leaves the White House. Trump’s face has been printed on massive banners hanging from federal buildings in Washington, D.C., including the Department of Justice headquarters.
The Department of State also created a commemorative “Patriot Passport” featuring an image of a scowling Trump leaning on his fists while standing in front of the Constitution. He’s also naming his policy achievements after himself — there are “Trump Accounts,” “TrumpRx,” and a “Trump Gold Card” that offers a fast-track to legal residency in the U.S. for the price of $1 million. The U.S. military is developing a line of “Trump-class” battleships as well as the USS Donald J.
His allies, meanwhile, are sticking his names on airports and highways — and Republican lawmakers want to put his face on a $250 bill. The president is also embroiled in several lawsuits against his efforts to remake D.C. in his image, including renaming the Kennedy Center and its campus after him, overhauling the capital’s beloved golf course and renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Trump also is fighting a legal battle over his demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a $400 million ballroom and military complex.
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