America is about to turn 250 years old, and the Biden administration’s big plan to celebrate was to put out a set of commemorative coins that didn’t feature a single Founding Father. Not Washington. Not Jefferson. Not Adams. Not Franklin. Not even Hamilton, and that guy has a whole Broadway musical.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Instead of honoring the men who actually, you know, founded the country whose birthday we’re celebrating, the Biden team designed coins featuring broken chains, a suffragette slab reading “Liberty Equality Justice for Women,” people linking arms under the slogan “We Shall Overcome,” and — wait for it — a six-year-old Ruby Bridges. They also managed to squeeze Frederick Douglass onto one of them. Douglass was a great American, but he was born 42 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Minor detail.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took one look at these things and did what any sane person would do. He scrapped the whole lot.
The new designs? The Mayflower Compact. A Revolutionary War soldier. Independence Hall. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. George Washington is back on the money where he belongs. It’s almost as if someone in the Trump administration remembered that the 250th anniversary of America is supposed to be about — and stay with us here — America’s founding.
Here’s what’s hilarious about the Biden-era designs. The law that authorized the coin redesign, USC 31 § 5112(y), specifically says the coins should commemorate the semiquincentennial — that’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Not the 250th anniversary of the civil rights movement. Not the 250th anniversary of women’s suffrage. The Declaration of Independence. Signed in 1776 by a bunch of guys in wigs who Biden’s team apparently found too problematic to put on a quarter.
Three of the five quarter designs under Biden were devoted to identity politics. Abolition. Suffrage. Civil rights. Those are all fine topics for coins on some other occasion. But when you’re celebrating the actual birthday of the nation and you skip the Founders entirely to check DEI boxes, you’ve told everyone exactly what you think about America’s founding. (Spoiler: they think it’s something to apologize for, not celebrate.)
U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach put it simply: “The new Semiquincentennial Quarter designs will celebrate American history and the founding of our great nation.” Revolutionary concept, isn’t it? Celebrating the founding at the founding’s birthday party.
But the coin swap is just one piece of this. Trump launched “Freedom 250” with plans for the largest fireworks display in the history of the world on the National Mall this July 4th. A Great American State Fair will take over the Mall from June 25 through July 10 with pavilions from all 50 states. PragerU and Hillsdale College partnered to build six “Freedom Trucks” — mobile museums touring all 50 states, bringing the story of the American Revolution to schools and communities. Six trucks. Every state. The actual story of how 13 colonies beat the most powerful empire on earth.
Think about that for a second. Biden’s team wanted to use the 250th to teach your kids that America’s real story is about oppression and overcoming its own sins. Trump’s team is using it to teach your kids that America’s real story is about liberty and kicking the British out. Those aren’t just different coin designs. That’s a fight over who gets to tell the next generation what this country means.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Compare what just happened to the 1976 Bicentennial — America’s 200th birthday. Those coins featured George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, a colonial drummer, and Independence Hall. Nobody on the Bicentennial committee thought, “You know what? Let’s skip the Founders and put some protest slogans on the quarter instead.” That thought didn’t occur to anyone in 1976 because the country hadn’t yet been marinated in 50 years of academic guilt about its own existence.
In just five decades, we went from George Washington on the Bicentennial half-dollar to “We Shall Overcome” chains on the 250th quarter. That’s the trajectory the Left has been on, and the coin designs are a perfect little museum exhibit of how far they got before voters said “enough.”
Mark my words — the 250th celebration is going to matter more than most people realize. Those six Freedom Trucks rolling through every state aren’t just a fun road trip. PragerU and Hillsdale don’t build national infrastructure for a one-year party. They’re building the cultural pipeline that tells American kids for the next 25 years what the founding actually meant. The Left had their version queued up and ready to go. Now it’s in the dustbin next to Biden’s coin designs.
And the Democrats? Their big response to all of this was to introduce the “Change Corruption Act” — a bill by Senators Merkley and Cortez Masto to block a commemorative Trump $1 coin. That’s their priority. Not fixing the coins. Not proposing their own celebration. Not offering a single idea about how to honor the country’s 250th birthday. Just making sure Trump’s face doesn’t end up on a dollar.
Senator Merkley actually said, “America has never had and never will have a king.” Buddy, we’re talking about a commemorative coin, not a coronation. Calvin Coolidge appeared on the 1926 Sesquicentennial half-dollar while he was still president. The republic survived.
The Democrats couldn’t even celebrate America’s birthday without turning it into a DEI seminar. Now they’re big mad that the adults showed up and put the Founders back on the money. Maybe if they spent less time worrying about Trump on a coin and more time figuring out why voters keep firing them, they wouldn’t need to pass legislation to feel relevant.
Happy 250th, America. Washington’s back on the quarter where he belongs.
