Treasury releases a draft $1 coin design for the country's 250th birthday with the President's face on the front and his fist on the back.

The country is going to be 250 years old next summer. To celebrate, Congress passed a law a couple years back that lets the Treasury mint a special run of $1 coins. The law has a rule. The rule says you cannot put a portrait of a living person on the reverse of one of these coins. There is no rule about the obverse. The obverse is the front. The reverse is the back. That is a small loophole, hon, but it is a loophole.

The Treasurer of the United States posted the draft design on Friday afternoon. The federal government, as a reminder, has been closed since Wednesday morning. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are home. The new $1 coin design proposes the following:

On the front, the side profile of the sitting President. The dates 1776 and 2026. The word LIBERTY.

On the back, an image of the President from his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, fist raised, blood on his ear, with the words FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT and an American flag billowing behind him.

Hon. That second one is a portrait. It is a portrait of a living person, on the reverse, which the law I just told you about specifically forbids. The defense, as far as anybody has offered one, is that the Butler image is more of a scene than a portrait, in the same way that a man holding up a sign that says “this is not a sign” is technically not a sign.

Now. I have been a waitress for thirty years. I have refilled coffee for ranchers, for oil men, for pastors, for a bond trader once who explained to me at length why I was wrong about Treasury bonds. Coins are a small thing. You barely use them. They sit in jars on the counter. Most people will never see this one.

But you ever notice how the country whose government has been closed for three days, whose museums are dark, whose air traffic controllers are working without pay, has time to release a coin design with the President’s fist on the back of it?

That ought to concern you.