A commission handpicked by the president has approved a design for a commemorative gold coin that features a portrait of Donald Trump.
Despite a longstanding tradition of omitting sitting presidents from commemorative coin designs, a proposal before the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts suggested using a portrait of the president standing over his resolute desk with his knuckles pressed firmly down while staring into the camera.
Thursday’s vote by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts clears the way for the U.S. Mint to begin production on the coin, whose size and denomination are still under discussion.
“As we approach our 250th birthday, we are thrilled to prepare coins that represent the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, and there is no profile more emblematic for the front of such coins than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement.
Federal law says no living president can appear on U.S. currency. But Megan Sullivan, the acting chief of the Office of Design Management at the Mint, said the Treasury secretary has authority to authorize the minting and issuance of certain coins.
The coin design will be for a Semiquincentennial Coin. The U.S. Treasury will mint a series of commemorative coins to honor the United States’ 250th anniversary.
The U.S. Mint had considered three designs, each featuring a different up-close portrait of Trump, for the 2026 commemorative coin. The president had approved the chosen design Thursday, Sullivan said.
Several Democratic senators have pushed to pass legislation that would prohibit the government from minting any coins featuring the likeness of a living or sitting president.
“President Trump’s self-celebrating maneuvers are authoritarian actions worthy of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, not the United States of America,” Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley said in a statement.
“While monarchs put their faces on coins, America has never had and never will have a king,” Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto added. “Our legislation would codify this country’s long-standing tradition of not putting living Presidents on American coins. Congress must pass it without delay.”
The Treasury Department defended the decision to pitch the president on a coin in October, writing on X: “On this momentous anniversary, there is no profile more emblematic for the front of this coin than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump.”
A design featuring the sitting president was not part of the original commemorative coin design proposals under the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which gave the U.S. Mint permission to create coins to celebrate America 250.
But the Treasury announced the last-minute plan to include a coin featuring the president. It’s unclear if Trump or the Treasury requested a coin featuring his likeness.
The White House declined to comment for this story.
The coin will be part of a “very limited production run,” Sullivan said, but the number has not been determined. The size and denomination of the coin also have not yet been decided, she said. Some commissioners noted Trump's fondness for big things as they advocated for the largest size coin, the Associated Press reports.
The Mint, which is part of the Treasury Department, has looked at a size for the Trump coin that is larger than its 1-ounce gold coin, which is about 1.3 inches in diameter, Sullivan said. Its largest coin is 3 inches, “so we're looking somewhere in there," she said.
A sitting president has not been featured on a commemorative coin since 1926, when former President Calvin Coolidge was included on the half-dollar for the 125th anniversary of the U.S.’s founding. The coin was less popular than anticipated, and more than 800,000 pieces had to be melted down.
The image of Trump to potentially be featured on the coin is based on a photo, taken by Daniel Torok, currently hanging in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum.
The words “Liberty” are featured around the president as well as “1776,” America’s founding year, and “2026,” to mark the Semiquincentennial anniversary. Underneath the president’s portrait is the phrase “In God We Trust.”
The back of the coin proposes a bald eagle, the national bird of the U.S., and “e pluribus unum,” the unofficial motto.
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