Donald Trump just banned this basic feature of American life
Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders to get moving on implementing the agenda the American people voted.
But there was one surprise in store for the American people.
And Donald Trump just banned this basic feature of American life.
Donald Trump bans the penny
Super Bowl Sunday figured to be a day that the American people figured they could veg out and forget about politics.
The Super Bowl is the last great unifying American event where the country cones together for a common purpose – to eat, drink, hang out with friends and family while enjoying the culmination of the NFL season.
This year, however, Donald Trump had something up his sleeve.
Trump become the first sitting President to attend the Super Bowl.
The game was a blowout as the Philadelphia Eagles avenged their Super Bowl 57 loss to the Kansas Chiefs by demolishing the Chiefs 40-22 in a game that wasn’t even that close.
Trump left the game early as was the plan.
Had President Trump stayed to the conclusion of the game security protocols would have mandated locking the site down meaning the 65,719 fans in attendance would have had to remain in place until the Presidential motorcade was safely away.
But after leaving the game Trump dropped a major bombshell.
The President announced he was signing an executive order banning the penny.
In a post on Truth Social Trump wrote that it cost more than two cents to produce the penny and the government wasted taxpayer money putting a currency into circulation that no one actually uses.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s announced order comes after Elon Musk wrote on social media that it costs 3.7 cents to produce the penny and that ending production would save taxpayers $179 million a year.
“The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023. The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Trump has the legal authority to end production of the penny.
The relevant statute give the Secretary of the Treasury to “mint and issue coins…in the amounts the secretary deems necessary to meet the needs of the United States.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can just decide the number of pennies the U.S. mint needs to produce this year to “meet the needs to the United States” is zero.
This is a commonsense executive order that the American people will understand and support.
Trump’s approval ratings sits at 53 percent – according to a recent CBS poll – because Americans believe Trump is acting to make their lives better.
