A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
New coins go into circulation today to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. The illustrations on the coins include early presidents, and in a break with tradition, a future $1 coin may also bear the likeness of the current occupant of the White House. NPR's Scott Horsley tries to make heads or tails of this.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The special coins were authorized back in 2021, in anticipation of this year's big semi-quincentennial celebration. Donald Scarinci serves on a Citizens Advisory Committee that reviewed the coin's design. He says it was a lengthy process that involved lots of focus groups and public outreach.
DONALD SCARINCI: In a democracy and in a country as vast as this, the only way to do this is exactly the way Congress decided it should be done, which is to form a committee of people from different regions of the country, different perspectives, and let them talk it through.
HORSLEY: The committee ultimately recommended five commemorative quarters. One featured Frederick Douglass to mark the abolition of slavery. Another highlighted the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. A third coin showed 6-year-old Ruby Bridges to celebrate school desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement. The idea, Scarinci says, was to honor not only the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago but also some of the battles fought since then to live up to that founding creed.
SCARINCI: We struggled as a nation with civil rights. We struggled as a nation with women's suffrage, but we persevered and we've made, at least in some situations, some progress.
HORSLEY: But when the Trump administration unveiled the new anniversary coins a few weeks ago, the Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and suffragette coins had been scrapped, replaced by coins featuring pilgrims, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address. Scarinci boycotted the unveiling ceremony, feeling he and his colleagues on the advisory committee had been improperly cut out of the process in defiance of federal law.
SCARINCI: We saw designs we had never seen before. And failure to review those designs makes those coins illegal, plain and simple.
HORSLEY: A spokeswoman for the mint says the new designs were chosen by the treasury secretary, but that all had been reviewed at some point by the Citizens Advisory Committee or the Commission of Fine Arts. The mint has also floated the idea of marking the nation's 250th birthday with a $1 coin featuring President Trump's likeness. Douglas Mudd, the curator of the Money Museum, run by the American Numismatic Association, says that would be unprecedented.
DOUGLAS MUDD: This would be a first to have a sitting president on a coin that's intended for circulation, and it breaks a lot of old, old traditions.
HORSLEY: George Washington's face didn't appear on a coin until 1932, more than a century after his death. Scarinci says our first president was strongly opposed to that kind of personal aggrandizement.
SCARINCI: He expressly said, I, George Washington, will not have my portrait on United States coins. We are done with kings. And for 250 years, around the world, the only nations that place images of their rulers on coins are monarchs and dictatorships.
HORSLEY: Nine Democratic senators have written to the treasury secretary urging him to reject the Trump coin and avoid the appearance of a cult of personality. Scarinci says coins are more than just a way to make change. They're long-lasting pieces of history and serve as a reflection of the nation's values.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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