A federal arts commission on Thursday voted to approve a commemorative U.S. gold coin featuring Donald Trump, the administration’s latest effort to celebrate the president, even as Democrats and members of another federal committee say the idea is deeply inappropriate and potentially illegal.
The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars. A Mint official told the panel that Trump had personally approved the design.
Members of the Commission of Fine Arts — composed entirely of Trump appointees, including a 26-year-old executive assistant whose only listed credential for the post was managing Trump’s portrait project — spent several minutes discussing potential changes to the coin, including how big to make it, before officially endorsing it.
“I think the larger the better, and the largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” said Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s executive assistant. Harris also said that the image captured Trump looking “very strong and very tough” and that it would be “fitting” to have him on a coin to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.
James McCrery II, who served as Trump’s first architect on his planned ballroom before wrangling with the president over its size, encouraged Treasury officials to make the coin “as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter” as he led the vote to approve it.
But new coin designs are supposed to receive approval from two panels — and that second panel, the bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, refused last month to consider the proposed gold coin. In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty.
“It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage,” said Michael Moran, a Republican coin collector who then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) recommended for appointment. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
Several members of the coin committee said the Trump administration could seek to mint the coin without their panel’s approval but would probably face legal challenges.
The coin committee is composed of numismatists, or experts in coin collecting, as well as a historian and an artist who specializes in medallic arts. Its most famous former member — retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a longtime coin collector — said he was disheartened because he believed well-designed coins could inform and inspire. He cited as examples a 1998 silver dollar that honored Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved, escaped and was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a 2017 gold coin that depicted Lady Liberty as an African American woman.
“I’m not enthusiastic about memorializing Mr. Trump on a coin because he has done so much damage to our country,” said Abdul-Jabbar, who served on the committee a decade ago. “It takes a huge consensus to get agreement on something like this, and I’m not inclined to be supportive of the president’s request.”
The White House and the Mint did not respond to questions about the commemorative coin and whether it was appropriate to commission it. Only one past president — Calvin Coolidge — was featured on a U.S. coin in his lifetime. Coolidge’s portrait appeared on a commemorative coin to mark the nation’s sesquicentennial in 1926, a year when he was president, with an image of George Washington overlaid. Coolidge’s inclusion sparked controversy, and most of the coins were later melted.
The Trump-themed gold coin marks the administration’s latest effort to shape U.S. currency. Officials last year proposed a separate $1 coin design featuring the president’s likeness, intended to honor the sesquicentennial and enter circulation, but the coin committee balked at taking up the proposal. Mint officials argue that because the committee declined to consider the coin, the administration is not bound by its review — a claim that current committee members dispute.
Meanwhile, the arts commission in January approved the Trump-themed $1 coin. The Treasury Department has not yet specified whether or when that coin will enter circulation.
Democrats have bristled at efforts to recognize Trump on currency and attempted to stop it. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), one of several Democrats who introduced legislation last year intended to block any living or sitting president from being featured on U.S. currency, told The Washington Post that the Trump-themed gold coin was “embarrassing” and against the nation’s values.
“Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy,” added Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). Lawmakers and congressional staff have also cited past laws they say should constrain the administration, such as a 2005 law that restricted some $1 coins to honoring deceased presidents.
Donald Scarinci, a Democrat whom Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) recommended to the coin committee, said that gold coins presented a “loophole” because the Treasury Department has the independent power, without congressional authority, to mint them.
“They can definitely make the coin without our review. But it would be an illegal coin,” Scarinci said. “It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about whoever the president is. It’s not something done in a democracy.”
The wrangling over the coin comes amid a bigger fight over how Trump and his allies are seeking to memorialize the 79-year-old president, with nearly three years remaining in his term. Trump’s deputies have put his name on buildings, such as the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, drawing complaints from lawmakers and lawyers who say that only Congress can rename the facilities, and GOP lawmakers have proposed renaming Dulles International Airport after him.
Trump has also sought to remake White House grounds, proposing a visitor screening center also under consideration Thursday and demolishing the White House’s East Wing to build his long-desired ballroom. His projects extend into Washington, with plans to construct a 250-foot triumphal arch along with other projects that would leave a physical imprint on the city.
Those efforts are generally unpopular, surveys have found. About two-thirds of Americans said they opposed efforts to rename Dulles Airport and the Kennedy Center after Trump, with about 15 percent in favor, according to an Economist/YouGov pollconducted last month. Majorities of Americans also said they opposed demolishing the East Wing to build the ballroom and erecting the triumphal arch, according to the poll.
Trump officials last year also scrapped designs for commemorative quarters that were approved in 2024 by the arts commission and coin committee, months before Trump took office, and would have honored Black Americans and notable women. Coin committee members said they were unhappy about the administration’s decision to instead issue quarters honoring the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address, calling the process flawed and the new designs lacking.
“The designs, the themes that they came up with for the quarters — that could have been done by a fifth-grade class on American history,” Moran said.
Coin committee members said they will continue to balk at considering currency with Trump’s face on it.
“I think all of us feel the weight of responsibility here,” Scarinci said. He noted that Trump fired holdovers on the arts commission and that the administration could do the same with the coin committee, whose members are appointed by the Treasury Department.
“They may fire us all,” Scarinci added. “They may replace us all to make this coin … but there’s a very high caliber of people on this committee, they know numismatics, and they know history, and they know this is wrong.”
Arts commissioners in January, at the first meeting of the reconstituted board, showed little compunction of their counterparts on the coin committee as they weighed the $1 coin and discussed Trump’s own preferences.
Two of the proposed designs “both remind me a little bit of that portrait that was done of the president, which he did not like,” said Roger Kimball, a critic that Trump named to the panel. But he praised another version that had “a statesmanlike quality, to the coif of the hair.”
The commission ultimately recommended that version.
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