Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto criticized the U.S. Mint’s new $1 coin bearing President Trump’s image, calling it a break with the country’s founding rejection of monarchy and highlighting Senate Republicans’ recent vote against her bill to ban the practice.
“What do Caesar, King George III, and Trump have in common? They all put their face on a coin to symbolize their imperial power,” Cortez Masto said on X. “But wait, the U.S. is not a kingdom. Trump is not a king. His face does not belong on our coins. Republicans blocked my bill with Sen. Merkley to stop the fake-gold Trump buck.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on July 15 that the Mint had begun striking a gold-finished $1 coin featuring Trump’s portrait on the obverse alongside the words “Liberty,” “In God We Trust” and the dates “1776-2026,” with the reverse featuring elements of the Great Seal and presidential eagle motif. “As America commemorates 250 years of independence, the @usmint will begin striking this new $1 gold coin to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism,” Bessent wrote on X. “Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all.”
Cortez Masto has repeatedly said the coin defies American tradition. “While monarchs put their faces on coins, America has never had and never will have a king,” Cortez Masto said in a statement from her office. “Our legislation would codify this country’s long-standing tradition of not putting living Presidents on American coins. Congress must pass it without delay.”
That legislation, the Change Corruption Act, was introduced by Cortez Masto and Sen. Jeff Merkley in December 2025 and would prohibit any U.S. currency from featuring the likeness of a living or sitting president, according to the bill’s official text on Congress.gov. The bill was referred to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and has not advanced.
Merkley attempted to force action on the bill on July 22, asking unanimous consent on the Senate floor to take it up and pass it. Sen. Cynthia Lummis objected, blocking the request, according to the Senate’s own official floor record for that day. Merkley separately said Republicans “blocked my Bill to Ban Gold Trump Coins,” arguing that “people want lower costs on groceries, gas, and doctor’s visits, not gold-plated Trump Bucks.” Merkley has also compared the effort to authoritarian practices, saying in an earlier statement that Trump’s “self-celebrating maneuvers are authoritarian actions worthy of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, not the United States of America.”
The coin’s design followed a broader overhaul of the Mint’s 250th anniversary coin program. A U.S. Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee had spent years developing designs including a quarter honoring abolitionist Frederick Douglass, another featuring Ruby Bridges, the six-year-old who helped integrate a New Orleans school in 1960, and one marking the women’s suffrage movement. Those designs were set aside by the Treasury Department in favor of quarters depicting George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln and a Pilgrim couple representing the Mayflower Compact, according to reporting on the design changes. U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said the new designs would “celebrate American history and the founding of our great nation,” while the prior administration had “remained focused on DEI and Critical Race Theory policies.”
The Mint’s authority for the $1 coin traces to the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which Trump signed during his first term and which directed the Treasury Secretary to issue $1 coins in 2026 with designs “emblematic of the United States semiquincentennial.” The administration has argued that authority permits the Trump coin despite longstanding norms against depicting living officials on currency, a position based in part on design approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose current members were appointed under Trump.
American currency has historically avoided depicting sitting presidents. During 1792 debates over the act establishing the U.S. Mint, a Senate proposal to feature the sitting president’s image on coins was rejected after George Washington argued the practice was too closely associated with monarchy. The only exception in U.S. history came in 1926, when a commemorative half-dollar marking the 150th anniversary of independence featured then-President Calvin Coolidge alongside Washington, a coin that was itself controversial and was a limited silver commemorative rather than a circulating coin.
Separately, the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 explicitly bars living or recently deceased presidents from that specific coin series, and a 19th-century law bars portraits of living people from paper currency, though neither statute explicitly addresses the circulating collectible coin category the administration is using for the Trump design.
Cortez Masto and Merkley have pursued the issue through multiple channels beyond the bill, including a December letter co-signed by seven Senate Democrats urging Bessent to reject the Trump-featuring designs, and an April letter asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to bar funding for a living president’s likeness on coins through the annual government funding process, according to a statement from her office on that effort.
Cortez Masto’s office has said Treasury’s approach has ignored the legally required design process. When the Mint’s proposed 250th anniversary designs were first unveiled in December, her office said the administration had made “a major deviation from the original proposals, which were recommended after a public comment period and with input from the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and Commission of Fine Arts in 2024,” and that Cortez Masto “strongly disagrees with the Trump Administration’s efforts to ignore the law and disregard required Congressional input.”
Neither the White House nor the Treasury Department has issued a direct public response to Cortez Masto’s renewed criticism.