The administration intends to release a one-dollar piece bearing President Donald Trump’s image next year, despite an ancient custom of avoiding commemorations of sitting, or even surviving former, presidents on coinage.
Rather than fifty-cent pieces honoring the end of servitude, granting females the privilege to vote, and the Civil Rights movement, the Treasury will instead circulate historic quarters showcasing Caucasian gentlemen from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were already amply represented on specie and in historical honors.
The new currency, arriving after the government ceased producing new cents earlier this year, highlights Trump’s push to impose his own mark on the presidency well beyond the boundaries of the White House – whether through affixing his own visage and designation on US bodies or by retreating from diversity endeavors to reshape the narrative of America itself.
The US Mint on Thursday unveiled the final coin concepts for historic quarters marking the nation’s 250th anniversary next year. Instead of the struggle against bondage or conferring suffrage on women, the designs predominantly recognized a more uniform perception of US history: George Washington for the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, James Madison and the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address, along with pilgrims to honor the Mayflower Compact.
“The designs on these historic coins represent the saga of America’s progression toward a ‘more excellent union,’ and champion America’s core principles of freedom,” stated Kristie McNally, the acting head of the Mint, in a declaration.
The US Mint informed CNN on Friday that instead of the beforehand suggested tribute coins for abolition, suffrage, and the Civil Rights movement, the fresh concepts celebrate “American heritage and the genesis of our esteemed republic.”
“While the Biden administration and (then-Treasury) Secretary (Janet) Yellen kept their concentration on DEI and Critical Race Theory doctrines, the Trump administration is devoted to encouraging affluence and patriotism,” Treasury official Brandon Beach remarked in a statement.
Trump has consistently criticized galleries and other organizations for being overly critical of America and its past.
He issued a directive in March to undo displays at federal properties such as the Smithsonian that he asserted inaccurately depicted the “nation’s unequaled heritage of advancing liberty, individual entitlements, and human felicity.” The order was generally viewed as part of the administration’s broader moves to scale back diversity programs.
What was on rejected coins
The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and Civil Rights pieces had never been sanctioned by the Treasury Department to recognize America’s 250th birthday. However, those themes were proposed last year by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a bipartisan governmental body, per meeting minutes reviewed by CNN.
The committee suggested an abolition of servitude coin featuring Fredrick Douglass, a leading antagonist of slavery and Civil Rights proponent of the nineteenth century, on the obverse. A hand and arm breaking loose from shackles were on the reverse.
The women’s suffrage coin would have depicted a female bearing a placard demanding “Votes for Women.”
And the Civil Rights coin would have shown Ruby Bridges as a six-year-old female, clutching her school satchels tightly as she integrated a primary school in New Orleans in 1960. She and three other Black schoolmates were escorted to class by federal deputies. The reverse of the coin displayed Civil Rights demonstrators linked arm-in-arm.
The committee’s concepts, developed across several years, arose from legislation that Trump himself enacted during his final week of his initial term in 2021.
That statute, which stipulated the US could release up to five fifty-cent pieces in 2026 to honor America’s 250th jubilee, specified that one design ought to be “symbolic of a woman’s or women’s role in the nation’s founding or the Declaration of Independence or any other momentous junctures in American heritage.”
The Mint advised CNN that the Mayflower Compact fifty-cent piece, which bears a woman on the front, satisfies this prerequisite.
The Trump dollar
The contentious Trump dollar piece is also a component of Treasury’s scheme to observe America’s 250th anniversary.
The US Mint released three distinct proposed coins Thursday with varied likenesses of Trump, including one mimicking his renowned booking photo from 2023. Designs for the reverse feature different renditions of the American eagle.
A previously unveiled version of the coin would have also displayed Trump on the reverse, lifting his arm after an assassination attempt last year. Nevertheless, US statutes forbid depictions of living individuals on the reverse sides of currency. The US Mint informed CNN there is no such restriction for the obverse of coins, although it has been US law since 1866 that living persons cannot appear on paper funds.
Still, Trump’s coin will only be the second occasion a US coin features a president who is alive. The initial was a half-dollar piece featuring both George Washington and then-President Calvin Coolidge released in 1926 to commemorate the nation’s 150th anniversary.
Vastly disliked, of the 1 million coins struck, almost 860,000 were returned to the Mint and melted down, per the American Numismatic Association.
Funnily enough, as part of the tribute for the nation’s 250th birthday, the Mint plans to issue a constrained quantity of cents yet again next year, marking the years 1776-2026 upon them.
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