“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump’s post said, describing the move as a cost-cutting measure.

It comes after Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) drew attention to the cost of minting pennies in a post on X last month.

The debate over the cost and usefulness of pennies has been a long-running one in the US.

“This is so wasteful,” Trump’s Truth Social post said.

“I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

According the US Mint’s 2024 annual report, making and distributing a one cent coin costs 3.69 cents.

US government officials and members of Congress have in the past proposed discontinuing the penny without success.

While its detractors have argued that the zinc and copper coin is a waste of money and resources, those who support it say that the coin keeps prices lower and boosts fund-raising for charities.

Other countries have discontinued similar coins. Canada ditched its one-cent coin in 2012 citing the cost of minting it and its falling purchasing power due to higher prices.

The declining use of cash meant the UK did not mint any new coins in 2024, after officials decided there were already enough coins in circulation.

The UK Treasury has said that 1p or 2p coins are not being scrapped, but with more people living cashless lives, there have been several years when no 2p coins were produced. 20p coins have also seen various periods without new minting.

US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction on Saturday to prohibit access, ordering Musk and his team to immediately destroy any copies of records.

The move comes after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration after Doge, a cost-cutting initiative led by Musk, was given access to the records.

They argued access for Musk, a “special government employee”, and Doge, which is not an official government department, violated federal law.

There was no immediate comment from the White House, President Donald Trump or Musk.

The Democratic state attorneys general sued Trump, the Treasury Department and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday.

Engelmayer’s order, issued early on Saturday, said the states would “face irreparable” harm without immediate relief.

“That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” the order read.

The order restrains the defendants from granting access to Treasury Department records containing personally identifiable or confidential information to special government employees, political appointees, and other employees from outside the department.

The injunction restricts anyone else from accessing those records other than civil servants who need to do so for their work at the Bureau of Fiscal Services and have passed background checks.

The judge further ordered any person among those restricted to immediately destroy copies of records.

The conditions will remain in place until the next court hearing on 14 February.

Tech titan and billionaire Musk has been heavily involved in upheaval during Trump’s second term, with Doge leading major cuts at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes billions of dollars of aid globally.