State department to offer Trump-branded US passports nationwide

Americans outside the nation’s capital will soon be able to get limited-edition passports that feature a picture of Donald Trump and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, the State Department announced.The department’s 27 passport agencies nationwide will start offering the special travel documents next month. They previously had only been available at the Washington DC passport office for in-person applicants.Trump, whose stern portrait is emblazoned on an inside page, is the first living president featured in the travel document. The government plans to issue more than 250,000 of the passports nationally and has dubbed them “patriot passports”.The passports are the latest instance of Trump having his name and likeness added to buildings, documents and other highly visible tributes. His image is on a gold-finished commemorative coin celebrating the nation’s official founding that the US Mint has begun producing, and there are efforts to put Trump’s signature on all new US paper currency, also a first for a sitting president, in moves that have infuriated critics.Passport offices in Centennial, Colorado; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New Orleans; New York; and Stamford, Connecticut, will offer the Trump passports at one-day special events starting on 8 August. The list will grow to include other passport offices.Those who want the limited-edition version must apply in-person on the day specified on the State Department’s passport website. Those wanting a traditional passport must apply on different days.The commemorative passport features Trump’s picture over a gold imprimatur of his signature to an interior page, while the cover carries the words “United States of America” in bold gold print at the top and “Passport” at the bottom – a reversal of the current standard cover. In addition, a small gold laminate American flag, with the number 250 encircled by stars, is at the bottom of the back cover.The only presidents featured in current US passports are in a double-page depiction of the Mount Rushmore hillside stone carving in South Dakota with the likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.Other depictions include the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and scenes of the Great Plains and the mountains and islands of the nation. Current passports also contain quotations from Martin Luther King Jr as well as presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.