President Joe Biden is awarding the second highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot by Donald Trump supporters, and whom Trump has said should be imprisoned.
Biden will present the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony at the White House on Thursday, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).
“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House stated. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”
Last year, Biden honored those who assisted in defending the Capitol from rioters or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump attempted and failed to overturn the outcome.
Cheney, a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection.
Cheney later stated that she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and even campaigned with her, inciting Trump’s ire.
Biden has been debating whether to grant preemptive pardons to Cheney and others whom Trump has targeted.
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office on January 20, refuses to retract his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has stated that he will pardon the rioters once in office.
During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump stated, “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence that they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he told me.
Biden is also presenting the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who worked to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a marriage equality activist.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who established new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and advocated for equal pay.
He’ll also present the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-NJ; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY, who advocated for gun safety measures after her son and husband were killed.
Biden will honor four individuals posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware state judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
The Presidential Citizens Medal, established by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the nation’s second highest civilian honor, following the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It is given to those who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or fellow citizens.”
