America's 250th birthday gift: Trump minted in gold

Washington: President Donald Trump's handpicked arts commission voted Thursday to approve a commemorative, 24-karat gold coin bearing Trump's image, brushing aside debate over whether the coin violates American tradition.

The coin, which is supposed to commemorate the nation's 250th anniversary, shows Trump with his fists pressed against a desk and a glowering expression on his face. The back of the coin features an eagle.

It is one of at least three coins featuring Trump's face, including a $1 coin that will circulate as currency, that the administration is planning.


The US Commission of Fine Arts, which advises federal agencies on design matters, voted unanimously on Thursday to approve the coin's design. The approval was a procedural hurdle as the Trump administration pushes ahead with the project.

Many of America's founders, including George Washington, were fiercely against taking steps that would make its government officials appear like kings, and that included featuring them on the country's coins. Only a handful of times in history have people been featured on US currency while they were alive.

The administration's move to mint official coins with Trump's face is also legally aggressive. An 1866 law called the Thayer Amendment states: "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."

But the Trump administration appears to be resting its actions in part on the argument that a coin is different from currency or a security, and it is not clear whether anyone would have legal standing to challenge the matter in court.

Administration lawyers have also cited two other statutes that they say give Treasury secretary Scott Bessent the power to authorise the minting and issuing of coins with Trump's face. A provision of Section 5112 of Chapter 31 of the US Code allows the minting of gold coins with "specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations and inscriptions as the secretary, in the secretary's discretion, may prescribe from time to time".

And the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 gives the treasury secretary temporary power in 2026 to issue $1 coins "with designs emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial." The statute does not define what counts as "emblematic" of the country's 250th anniversary, which the administration appears to believe leaves it free to decide that an image of Trump is such a symbol.

On Thursday, Megan Sullivan, the acting chief in the office of design management at the US Mint, told the panel the plans for the gold coin were not part of the 2020 legislation authorising special coins to celebrate the anniversary. Instead, she said, they were being made under Bessent's authority.

Sullivan said the Treasury had not yet determined the size of the coins or how much they would be valued, but she suggested they would be worth hundreds of dollars each. Members of the panel encouraged her to make them as large as possible. "I think the president likes big things," said James C McCrery II, the vice chair of the panel.

No one at the meeting spoke against the idea. Before taking the vote, board members seemed mostly concerned with whether Trump liked the design.

Trump has pushed to eliminate any resistance within his administration to his design plans. He fired the entire board of the Commission of Fine Arts last year and began appointing allies to the panel; they included his former receptionist. "Does the president know about this design? Has he looked at it?" the panel's chair, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., asked during the meeting.

Sullivan said Trump had personally approved the design.

"Yes, it is my understanding that the secretary of the Treasury presented this design, as well as others, to the president and these were his selection," she said.