The U.S. Treasury Department is taking steps to prepare for the potential creation of a new $250 bill featuring President Donald Trump’s image and honoring the country’s 250th birthday. While the department announced preparations 14 months after a bill was introduced in Congress, it’s taken more than a decade to create a new $20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
“I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the president of the United States, the person who was president of the United States, on the 250th anniversary bill,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
Federal law currently prevents a living person from appearing on official U.S. currency. It’s been more than 150 years since a living person has appeared on a note or coin. But a measure in Congress, introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., would change the law to allow Trump to appear on a new $250 note.
“At Treasury, we prepare things in advance, so we have prepared in advance that if the legislation is passed, but we will stick to the law,” Bessent said.
It’s not clear yet what those preparations look like.
The Treasury Department’s speed in developing the new bill is a far cry from how it handled a plan announced in 2016 by President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman on a $20 bill by the year 2020. More than a decade later, Tubman’s face cannot be found on the $20 bill.
Tubman, a former slave, helped transport an estimated 70 individuals out of slavery to freedom on the Underground Railroad. She also organized a spy ring during the Civil War to assist the Union Army.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who first sponsored legislation in 2015 to put Tubman’s portrait on the $20 bill, blasted the Trump administration’s push for the new $250 bill.
“It’s a travesty that we’re about to celebrate 250 years of this great nation without ever having featured a woman on our currency,” she told Spectrum News in a statement. “It would have been the perfect opportunity to recognize the critical role that women have played in this country’s history, but instead President Trump is focusing on self-aggrandizing actions like illegally putting his own face on a $250 bill.
“It’s clear that the president is choosing to prioritize his own ego over what Americans are actually asking for,” she added.
While campaigning in 2016, President Trump called the proposal for Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill “pure political correctness.” He suggested she be featured on a different denomination, such as the $2. After beginning his first term in office, his treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, pushed back the debut of the Tubman bill to at least 2026, saying the department needed to focus on anti-counterfeiting measures instead.
Under the Biden administration, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said putting Tubman on the $20 bill was a priority, but the timetable for the new currency didn’t change. A source familiar with Treasury operations in the Biden administration told Spectrum News the agency had set a target date of 2030 for the redesign to incorporate those anti-counterfeiting measures.
“The frustrating thing is that it shouldn’t take us 15 years to get this done,” Shaheen said. “I mean, we’re at war with Iran. We’re able to produce bombs and take decisive action in ways that the administration is committed to. If we were committed to this, we could have gotten it done a long time ago.”
Spectrum News has asked both the White House and Treasury Department about the current status of placing Tubman on the bill multiple times, but all inquiries have gone unanswered. Treasury did not respond to requests about how a $250 note could be prepared so quickly while the $20 has taken more than a decade.