Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.
Military officers sometimes hand out challenge coins. Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:
FBI Director Kash Patel has created such a coin for himself that he’s now handing out, and Americans can only wish that he’d take them all and lock them in his desk, never to be seen again.
The coins are, to put it gently, ridiculous. On one side, they have what appears to be the symbol of the Punisher, a Marvel character. The Punisher is a vigilante who does … well, vigilante stuff, killing evildoers at will as revenge for the death of his family. The symbol is popular with a lot of people, including criminals, law-enforcement officers, soldiers, and some extremist groups such as the anti-government Three Percenters. None of this is good, especially because the character’s creator long ago admitted that the symbol was partly inspired by the Nazi SS’s Totenkopf, or “Death’s Head,” uniform insignia. (The author of the series also notes that the Punisher hates cops, something the police officers wearing the mark don’t seem to get.)
This is illegal on its face. Changing the design of coins requires Congressional legislation, which won’t happen while the Senate filibuster remains in place. Trump coins would be counterfeit. /1 pic.twitter.com/szBNWFfoir
— Jeff George (@webdevjeffus) October 4, 2025
