A New U.S. Passport Features an Image of Trump — and You Can Only Get It One Way

The State Department has begun issuing a commemorative U.S. passport marking the nation's 250th anniversary, and its most striking feature is an illustration of President Donald Trump. The special edition, which the department started distributing Monday, is available only through a narrow and deliberately limited channel — a detail that has already turned the document into a political talking point.

One commemorative page displays an illustration of Trump seated behind the Oval Office's Resolute Desk, set against the printed text of the Declaration of Independence, with his signature reproduced beneath the image. The facing page features John Trumbull's iconic 18th-century painting "Declaration of Independence," tying the sitting president's likeness to the founding document at the heart of the semiquincentennial celebration.

Getting one is not simple. The 250th commemorative passport is issued only through in-person appointments at the Washington Passport Agency, beginning July 6, and at select State Department-sponsored passport-acceptance events, while supplies last. Travelers will not receive the commemorative version if they apply online, renew by mail, apply at any other passport agency, or apply through a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad. The special edition is offered only in the standard 28-page book.

For Americans who would prefer a passport without the president's image, the department has effectively left a workaround. Applicants who go in person in Washington but do not want the commemorative design can simply request the larger book with extra pages, which is not part of the special run — a quirk that has circulated widely online as an unofficial opt-out.

The rollout fits a broader pattern of the administration stamping Trump's personal imprint on federal institutions and symbols, and it arrives amid a busy season of official 250th-anniversary programming. Supporters cast the passport as a fitting patriotic keepsake for a milestone year; critics see it as an unusual insertion of a sitting president into a routine government document that millions of citizens carry. Either way, its scarcity — one office, by appointment, while supplies last — all but guarantees that only a small number of travelers will ever carry one.

State Department officials described the commemorative book as a limited-edition tribute rather than a replacement for the standard passport, and stressed that ordinary passports issued through the usual channels are unchanged and remain fully valid for international travel. Commemorative and anniversary passport designs are not unheard of; other countries have issued special editions to mark national milestones, and the U.S. has periodically refreshed its passport artwork with patriotic imagery. What makes this edition unusual is the prominent depiction of a sitting president, a choice that guarantees the document will be read through a political lens. Collectors and supporters have already signaled interest in obtaining one before the run ends, while opponents have amplified the extra-pages workaround as a quiet form of protest.