The new $1 Trump coin doesn't just buck norms. Experts say it also breaks laws
The U.S. Mint is producing a new $1 coin featuring President Trump’s image. He’s only the second living president to get this honor, after Calvin Coolidge in 1926.
AP/Treasury Department
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AP/Treasury Department
In his second term, President Trump’s image has cropped up in many new places: U.S. passports, national park passes, government building banners and — soon — official coins.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled designs this week for a commemorative $1 gold-colored coin, which he said the U.S. Mint will start producing in honor of the country’s 250th birthday.
One side features the bald eagle from the distinctive U.S. seal. The other shows a close-up of Trump — wearing a suit, tie and serious expression — encircled by the word “Liberty” and “1776-2026.”
“It’s very cute, they gave me a coin,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. “That’s very unusual, from what I understand.”
A coin with the sitting president’s face has only been minted once, exactly a century ago. And, experts say, it’s likely illegal.
“The law prohibits, currently, on currency, the likeness of any person — not just the president — who is alive,” said Jeremy Paul, a professor and former dean at Northeastern University School of Law who specializes in constitutional law.
The Treasury Department argues coins do not apply, citing a law that Congress passed in 2020 authorizing the creation of a special-edition 250th coin.
Paul says the coin question could potentially reach the courts. Either way, he believes, the break with tradition should be cause for concern.
“Regardless of careful parsing of the language of these individual statutes, this plan the president and Secretary Bessent have cooked up is inconsistent with the principles of our country, and it politicizes something that’s not supposed to be political,” he said.
President Trump’s image has been added to passports, national park passes and federal buildings — like the Department of Justice headquarters — in his second term.
Ken Cedeno/AFP via Getty Images
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Ken Cedeno/AFP via Getty Images
A Trump $1 coin has been in the works since at least late last year, despite backlash from Democratic lawmakers who introduced a bill to block it. The federal Commission of Fine Arts — which is stacked with presidential appointees — approved the design in March, though it’s a different version than the one Treasury officials shared this week.
This coin, which the Treasury says has a “gold-like finish,” will be minted in Philadelphia and available for purchase in the fall.
It’s one of several ways this administration is seeking to put Trump’s mark on American money. In March, the Treasury announced that all future paper currency will bear Trump’s signature, another first for a sitting president. It also prepared a $250 bill featuring Trump’s face, though Congressional approval — which is required for the new denomination — does not seem imminent.
And yet, Bessent confirmed last week that his department is no longer planning to move ahead with preexisting efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. That juxtaposition was not lost on Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, one of several lawmakers who criticized the new coin from both sides of the aisle.
“They can put Trump on a $1 coin, but can’t keep a decades-old promise to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill???” Beatty tweeted. “This Treasury is funding presidential vanity projects.”
Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the practice of putting the head of state on coins has long been “associated with monarchies and other forms of authoritarian regimes.” George Washington actively refused it for this reason, and at least two federal laws forbid it.
“One of the reasons for Congress wanting to prohibit this is that we don’t want presidents acting like kings,” Painter said. “And this is not the only way in which Donald Trump has acted like a king.”
Unpacking the legal questions
In the mid-19th century, a Treasury official named Spencer Clark slipped his own portrait on a banknote that Congress had intended to honor the late explorer William Clark (partner to Meriwether Lewis).
That prompted outrage, and the Thayer Amendment of 1866. It appears in the U.S. code as: “Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities.”
“We don’t want neutral symbols like our money to be partisan, to reflect preference for one living person or another person,” Paul explained.
Bessent acknowledged that requirement while showing the coin to Fox News on Tuesday, but argued there is a loophole.
“During the 150th there was a Calvin Coolidge coin,” he said. “So we can put living peoples’ images on a coin.”
Coolidge was the only president to be featured on a coin in his lifetime, for the sesquicentennial in 1926. That year’s celebrations were ultimately labeled a “flop.” And demand for the special-edition coin fell vastly short of expectations: over 859,000 pieces out of the 1 million produced were ultimately returned to the Mint and melted.
“Whatever precedent there might be, the law has changed further in the direction of trying to de-politicize the currency since then,” Paul said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the design of the coin this week, defending its legality.
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George Walker IV/AP
The 2005 Presidential $1 Coin Act — which authorized a series of coins commemorating past presidents — says a president can only be eligible if they have been deceased for at least two years.
The presidential coin program ended in 2016, but released its final coin in 2020 in honor of George H. W. Bush two years after his death.
Also in 2020, during the first Trump administration, Congress passed a law authorizing the treasury secretary to issue $1 coins “with designs emblematic of the United States Semiquincentennial during the one-year period beginning January 1, 2026.”
The Treasury and Mint say the Trump coin is legal under that statute.
Court challenges are possible, but both lawyers NPR spoke with said they might be difficult for procedural reasons.
“In order to take your case to court, you have to prove that you were injured,” Paul explained. “And the question is, who’s injured by the fact that the president is violating this law?”
Painter offers one hypothetical scenario: A vendor or customer in a transaction could refuse to accept the coin as legal tender, once it’s on the market.
One person has tried already. In March, James Rickher, a retired lawyer in Portland, Ore., sued to block the proposed coin, arguing it would directly harm him as a novice coin collector.
A federal judge said last month that Rickher had “failed to develop the record to show that he is more than a ‘concerned bystander,'” and denied the motion without addressing the underlying legal question.
How America’s 250th honors Trump
Trump’s likeness is also on special-edition passports commemorating America’s 250th anniversary.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
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Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Commemorative coins, like this Trump design, are considered legal tender, but the purchase price typically exceeds their face value. The Treasury and the White House did not respond to NPR’s questions about how much the coin will cost and where the proceeds will go.
The U.S. Mint’s website says part of the price of commemorative coins is a “surcharge that goes to organizations and projects that benefit the community,” like building new museums, preserving historical sites and supporting Olympic programs.
Painter suspects the administration’s primary motivation for the coin is not financial: “I think this is entirely about Donald Trump’s ego.”
At the same time, he said, there’s “a lot to be concerned about … when it comes to President Trump and money” more broadly.
He pointed to recent financial disclosures showing that Trump and his family made more than a billion dollars from cryptocurrency and other business ventures in the past year, even as investors in his own severely devalued $TRUMP memecoin have lost money. Trump has also drawn scrutiny for the large volume of securities trades made by his investment advisers, as well as licensing agreements, real estate holdings and other potential financial conflicts of interest.
The Trump administration has used America’s 250th birthday as the impetus for many controversial projects, from resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to proposing a 250-foot arch near the National Mall in D.C. to launching passports with Trump’s likeness. House Democrats have also accused Trump of “hijacking” the national 250th celebrations for his political and financial gain, which organizers deny.
The administration frames these actions as appropriate celebrations for a milestone anniversary. But Paul sees the $1 coin as part of a troubling pattern.
“Building triumphant arches and putting your name on the Kennedy Center and getting your name on airports and talking about how you’re going to get your face on Mount Rushmore,” Paul said, “All of those things are signals: ‘I’m bigger than the country and I’m more important than the country and the country should honor me.’ Whereas what you want is the president to honor the country.”
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