In short: probably not.
But will it matter?
In October, the Treasury Department raised eyebrows when it controversially announced that, as part of next year’s semiquincentennial, it was considering designing a commemorative coin honoring President Donald Trump.
“No fake news here,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach wrote in a post on X. “These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real.”
The proposed design would contain Trump’s bust on the obverse and an image of Trump on the reverse raising his fist in defiance after the July 2024 assassination attempt on him with the words “fight, fight, fight” along the upper rim. Similar to the popular bicentennial coins, the proposed Trump coin would have the dates “1776-2026” on them.
In December, the U.S. Mint released additional designs which were less provocative and more traditional (presidential seals and eagles on the reverse instead of Trump with a raised fist).
There’s one pretty big obstacle though.
The Thayer Amendment of 1866 prohibited the depiction of living people on U.S. currency. As I recounted in a prior blog post:
In 1864, Congress had authorized the printing of additional 3, 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 cent notes, and had intended the five cent note to bear the portrait of famed explorer William Clark. Unfortunately, they soon learned a lesson in proper legislative drafting as the bill only mentioned “Clark.” Spencer M. Clark, then Superintendent of the National Currency Bureau, saw the bill and the flattered official reasoned that he must be the “Clark” that was being honored by Congress — that or he took advantage of a statutory ambiguity to make his dream of appearing on U.S. currency come true. Either way, Congress was outraged and soon passed a law that no living person could appear on U.S. currency (a law that would be broken a few times in the years since).
“It is derogatory to the dignity and the self-respect of the nation,” Rep. Russell Thayer (R-PA), who sponsored the amendment codifying that prohibition into law, said in response to the new “Clark” notes. “I trust the House will support me in the cry which I raise of ‘Off With Their Heads!’”
“If I Had A Nickel…” (July 31, 2020)
The text of the Thayer Amendment is pretty clear. “Hereafter no portrait or likeness of any living person shall be engraved or placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, or postal currency of the United States,” it says.
Despite that unambiguous language, the Thayer Amendment has been broken several times without consequences. In 1921, Alabama governor T.E. Kilby was depicted on his state’s centennial half dollar. Fifteen years later, Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas appeared on his state’s centennial half dollar while Senator Carter Glass of Virginia was on the Lynchburg Sesquicentennial coin. For more modern examples, Eunice Kennedy Shriver was on a 1995 Special Olympics coin while Nancy Reagan’s First Spouse coin was approved months before her death in 2016.
And, there’s a direct precedent when it comes to using a living person’s image on an American anniversary coin. The sesquicentennial commemorative half dollar in 1926 contained a bust of then-President Calvin Coolidge — the first time a sitting president had ever been depicted on a government issued coin.
The law authorizing the minting of sesquicentennial commemorative coins did not say a word about how it should be designed, leaving that decision to the Mint. (The bill authorizing the half dollar that would eventually bear Robinson’s was similarly silent.) There was very little pushback or backlash when Mint officials chose to ignore the Thayer Amendment and honor the popular Coolidge. People just accepted it and moved on with their lives.
In the case of the potential Trump coin, the Mint clearly hopes for a similar result. Noting that the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 had authorized the Mint to issue coins “with designs emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “there is no profile more emblematic for the front of this coin than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump.”
The Administration could easily site the 1926 coin (to say nothing of the others) as precedent and say that the Mint has wide discretion to design coins as they see fit — including whether to violate the Thayer Amendment.
It would be up to a concerned party to challenge them in court — and considering how deferential the Supreme Court has been to this president, groups that otherwise might want the fight could reconsider their priorities. And as this ABA Journal article points out, if Trump or someone in his administration decided to ignore a court order, there isn’t a lot that can be done.
But one thing is for sure: It’s doubtful the Administration will escape significant backlash the way Coolidge’s White House did. For one thing, Coolidge was very popular and had just been elected in one of the biggest landslides in American history.
The economy was booming at the time (or so it seemed) and people were feeling good about things. Plus, information wasn’t as readily available back then as it is now. It’s likely that few people outside of government insiders and numismatics even knew what the Thayer Amendment was. And given how many 1926 sesquicentennial half dollars ended up being unsold, it certainly seemed that few people cared enough about the coin to raise a stink about who was on it.
That wouldn’t happen today. The country is bitterly divided, people are anxious about the economy and Trump is a divisive figure who inspires a wide range of emotions ranging from fervent devotion to abject hatred and everything in between.
The Mint is basically caught between a rock and a hard place. If it were to issue one of these coins, it would invite a huge backlash, a possible boycott of its other coin programs, including the semiquincentennial commemoratives, and potential litigation. If it decided not to issue the coin, Trump’s legions of fans would accuse it of betraying their leader by going woke or something like that.
Then again, given how Trump fans love to buy anything with his likeness on them, the Mint can rest assured that a coin bearing his likeness would likely sell well. And given how commemorative coin programs can be hit or miss, that level of financial certainty might be all the justification the Mint needs.
