If you would like evidence that the ultimate goal of the Trump Administration and MAGA leadership is a white-male-supremacist society, look no further than the Treasury Department’s release of designs for the US Mint coin set commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday. This has taken a truly absurdist turn.

Trump’s assault on our nation’s political, social, and cultural diversity, as well as on the historical record of our struggles to become “a more perfect union” in which the Declaration’s promise of equality is fulfilled, is of astounding, mind-numbing magnitude. Much of this assault is substantive and direct, but some of it leans more toward the symbolic (although such a distinction is problematic). The Administration has issued extensive restrictions on “woke” language (leading to the absurd redaction or near-redaction of “Enola Gay,” the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, from numerous documents). It has eliminated Pride Month, Black History Month, and other commemorations from federal events. It has prohibited federal employees from including gender pronouns in email signatures. It has ordered national park gift shops to stop selling merchandise promoting DEI. It has reversed the Biden Administration’s style guidelines for using Calibri font, which makes websites more accessible for individuals with certain vision constraints.

It has, of course, done far worse than this; these are simply examples of the more . . . petty extremes to which Trump is going.

But to my mind, the new coin release is particularly revealing. Here is the New York Times report: “The War on ‘Wokeness’ Comes to the U.S. Mint.” The coin designs were announced at a Philadelphia event that sounds a bit reminiscent of a junior-high patriotic tableau from my youth. The Times reports:

Left unmentioned amid the event’s fife-and-drum pageantry was that these coins also represented a rejection of a different set of designs — meant to commemorate certain other inspiring chapters of the nation’s history, including abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the decision to eliminate these designs, ignoring “the more diverse recommendations for the quarters by the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a bipartisan group mandated by Congress to review the U.S. Mint’s proposed designs for American coins.”

Don’t worry, though, because the released set will still adhere to the legislative requirement that women’s contributions to our nation’s history be recognized: 

“The Mayflower Compact Quarter fulfills this legislative requirement,” a Mint official said in a statement. “The women of the Plymouth colony were essential for the colony’s survival by making medicines from native plants, preserving food, and educating children. It’s likely the women formed early connections with the Native American Wampanoag community, collecting knowledge about farming and food preparation.”

I pity the Mint official who was compelled to issue such a demeaning and insulting rationale — insulting not just to women, of course, but to all Americans past and present.

In what universe are the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage for women, and the civil rights movement not essential parts of our 250-year history as an independent nation?

It can only be a universe of white male supremacy. Women are allowed in only as those who helped their menfolk survive the dangers of a New England winter. Native Americans are allowed in only as the uncivilized, and thus closer-to-nature, peoples who can show the Europeans how to grow and use the foodstuffs peculiar to the New World.

And the work is not done: word is out that the Administration is planning a commemorative dollar featuring Trump’s profile — which would be the first time in our history that a living person appears on our currency. George Washington expressly rejected the idea, finding it too akin to other nations’ use of images of sitting monarchs on their coins.

The assault on diversity is an assault on democracy.