President Joe Biden will award the second-highest civilian award to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden will award the second-highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, the lawmakers who led Congressional investigation about the violent January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, and that Trump has said they should be jailed.
Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in the treatment of wounded soldiers and two of the president's longtime friends, former senators Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
“President Biden believes these Americans are united by their common decency and their commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better thanks to their dedication and sacrifice.”
Last year, Biden honored people who participated in defending the Capitol from rioters, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results. .
Cheney, who was a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, headed the House committee that investigated the insurrection. Cheney later said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and even campaigned with her, adding to Trump's ire. Biden has been considering offering preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office on Jan. 20, still refuses to retract his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he will forgive rioters once he takes office.
During an interview with NBC's “Meet the Press,” Trump said: “Cheney did something that is inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the commission of political thugs and, you know, perverts that he didn't select,” stating without evidence that “erased and destroyed” the testimony they collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Biden is also giving the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for the use of tourniquets on war wounds; 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 fought for equal pay.
He is also presenting the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Association.
Other former lawmakers who will be honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who defended gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
Biden will posthumously honor four people: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once… and Young” (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 detained with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
The Presidential Citizens Medal, created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the nation's second-highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those who “performed exemplary acts of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”