Trump’s new $1 coin designs revealed after iconic ‘fight’ version axed as Dems battle vanity project
The special President Donald Trump $1 coin, minted to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday, looks set to get a more classic design as opposed to the ‘fight, fight, fight’ image originally shared by the Treasury Department.
Several new designs for the controversial Trump coin that Democrats have been pushing to block have been submitted to the Commission on Fine Arts, the independent agency that advises the federal government on design aesthetics.
The trio of coin designs include close-ups of Trump’s face; the word ‘Liberty’ above his head and the years 1776-2026 listed below.
In each one, the president looks in a different direction.
Commissioners voted at a meeting Thursday morning to recommend the version with a side profile of Trump as long as it was to the president’s liking.
They were concerned about the appearance of Trump’s hair in other proposed designs.
“That layer of hair up there is not right,” commissioner James C. McCrery said of the design Trump was looking forward to.
McCrery was the first chosen to design Trump’s ballroom but was replaced by Shalom Baranes, who had more experience with major federal construction projects.
The Fine Arts Commission voted Thursday to recommend the design to President Donald Trump for the controversial $1 coin to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.
The Treasury Department first shared this design for the coin in October, showing President Donald Trump posing after surviving an assassination attempt.
McCrery was among five new appointees to the Fine Arts Commission, which also reviewed the ballroom design Trump selected earlier this month after firing former members in October.
Commission member Roger Kimball said the side-profile version of the coin ‘has a statesman-like quality to the top of the hair.’
The panel selected the coin to have a classic eagle design, and members suggested cutting the Liberty Bell from the proposed outline to make it look less busy.
Democrats are trying to push back on that effort, pointing to historical precedent of never putting a living president’s face on U.S. currency.
In December, Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley and Catherine Cortez Masto co-sponsored a bill that would prevent a president from putting his own image on money.
“President Trump’s self-congratulatory maneuvers are authoritarian actions befitting dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, not the United States,” Merkley said in a statement at the time of the bill’s release.
He called the coins a “misuse of taxpayer dollars” that has turned the United States into a “strongman state.”
Cortez Masto interjected: ‘While monarchs put their own faces on coins, America has never had and never will have a king.’ ‘Our legislation would codify this country’s long-standing tradition of not putting living Presidents on American coins.’
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Fine Arts Commission members rejected these two $1 Trump coin designs. The right was rejected because of the appearance of the president’s hair
Fine Arts Commission members selected this design for the reverse of Trump’s $1 coin, but it did not feature the Liberty Bell image
With a Republican majority in Congress, it is unlikely the bill will pass before the coins are minted later this year.
At Thursday morning’s meeting, commissioners were told that only three people had made public comments, and all were opposed to putting Trump’s face on a $1 coin.
U.S. Mint representative Megan Sullivan, a senior design specialist according to LinkedIn, was asked about the legality of putting Trump’s face on it.
He said he could only speak in ‘generalities’ because he was not a lawyer, but said the legal research was done by the Mint and the Treasury Department.
“And they determined that it didn’t violate any laws, it was completely legal,” he said, pointing to a law allowing commemorative coins to be made for the United States Centennial.
The coin design will also be reviewed by the Citizens Coin Advisory Committee.
The final decision will technically have to be made by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
It is unclear when this decision will be made, and Trump, who will make the final decision, has not made a public choice.
