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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   16489 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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Treasury Secretary Bessent confirms limited steps toward a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that his department has prepared the design for a $250 bill featuring President Donald Trump, anticipating the passage of stalled legislation in Congress to put the president on a new denomination of legal tender.

“The president doesn’t do it; the House and the Senate have to do it,” Bessent said at the White House, referring to legislation, introduced by Representative Joe Wilson, R-S.C., that would direct the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to put Trump’s face on the new bill to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Wilson’s legislation, which so far has languished in Congress, is intended to create an exception to existing law that bars any living person from appearing on U.S. currency; the bill would allow current and former presidents to be featured.

Large denomination currency & Trump were joked about in a Friday Fun Thread at some point, but we all know jokes-->reality is a short pipeline these days. Do I expect Congress to actually pass the bill necessary to carve out an exception? No. This seems more like Bessent (who looks like a cheap clone of Donald Rumsfeld in some of the photos) doing what his boss told him to do while knowing the project is probably DOA.

Even if the stars aligned and they did pass the exception, the bills would be not be that useful. Considering how many businesses there are now that refuse to take $50 or $100 bills, a $250 would be even more limited. Aside from collectors and usual unsavory types that caused the original high denomination bills to go out of circulation, I don't imagine the average American would have much use for these.

It seems to me that if the Democrats want an increase in the federal minimum wage, they could probably get Trump (and MAGA Republican congressmen) on board if they agreed to the $250 bill with Trump's picture on it. Edit: Probably they could get more concessions if they agreed to make the $250 gold in color.

Or here's an idea: A $250 bill with half of the bills printed with Trump's picture on it and half of anyone else of the Democrats' choosing. (I have some thoughts about whom they would choose, but they are a bit too "boo outgroup" to include.)

I don’t think that you should have two different people on the same bills, as it introduces the threat of fraud as people cannot tell at a glance whether the bill is real enough to consider as real. If one bill has a person no one recognizes, they’d probably treat the bill as potentially fake. It also opens the weird political situation where MAGA types accept only the Trump bill and Blues only accept the other bill.

I mean have you seen what quarters look like?

Or seen the number of people who think $2 bills are fake?

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