President Donald Trump's administration has redesigned the ten-cent coin ahead of the 250th birthday of the United States. One key piece is missing; however, he changed the design of the Great Seal of the United States.
Fortune picked up on the elements missing from the seal that reads "E Pluribus Unum," which is Latin for "out of many, one." The seal typically features an eagle clutching a banner with the saying in its beak. In its talon are arrows and an olive branch, the symbol of peace.
Trump's White House features the eagle clutching only arrows and looking to its right talon, which is supposed to hold the olive branch, as if it had accidentally dropped it. In the photo on the U.S. Mint website, there is also a very small "EC" that is under the eagle.
It also reads "liberty or tyranny," a reference to the liberal founding father Thomas Jefferson's quote, "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Fortune assessed, "For a nation whose founding symbols were carefully engineered around the balance of peace and war, that omission is hard to read as accidental."
For one year, Congress authorized the U.S. Mint to add the years 1776–2026 to the new coins. It's not clear who approved the redesign of the seal, however.
"When the Great Seal of the United States was finalized in 1782, it contained what the Founding Father’s held as the country’s most esteemed values. The eagle holds thirteen arrows in its left talon and an olive branch in its right, its head turned toward the branch — the side which the eagle preferred to err on," Fortune explained.
The final design, more than 200 years ago, came from Charles Thomson, who noted that the message from the U.S. would always be a desire for peace, but a readiness for war. President Theodore Roosevelt redesigned the eagle to turn toward the arrows. At the end of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt had it changed to face back toward the olive branch, a move that was made into law by Executive Order 9646 from President Harry Truman, the White House History site said.
Two weeks ago, Trump launched a war against Iran with an eight-minute speech in the middle of the night, saying, "The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future."
Fortune said that this isn't just a design choice, but "it’s a cultural signal. The Founders spent six years perfecting the balance between peace and war on the Great Seal. Erasing half of that equation, on a coin meant to celebrate their legacy and especially 250 years after they fought for 'Liberty over Tyranny,' says something about which half the country currently feels like."
