Trump on the $250 bill? Perhaps this would stimulate the economy, since the people who detest Trump would spend the bill as soon as possible. People who love him would also spend it at Starbucks, just to see the baristas wince. But it doesn’t seem likely. It seems impossible that the nation could agree on anyone to put on the $250, unless it’s Mr. Rogers. Someone would complain about any historical figure not aligning exactly with the proper beliefs of the day. Where did FDR stand on trans rights? If you said, “The matter never came up, and besides, he mostly sat,” it wouldn’t be enough. Simply existing in an unenlightened time would be sufficient to get the veto.
To see how these things go nowadays, look to old Blighty. The Bank of England recently changed its money to deplatform problematic people, like Winston Churchill. They could’ve just stamped the bills with the sort of message you see before TV shows. Content warning: smoking, drinking, racism, nationalism. You’d think they would have kept computer pioneer Alan Turing, who was gay, but no. According to a story in The Telegraph that released the focus-group comments on redesigning the currency, one member of the public said:
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