President Joe Biden awards the second-highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson – the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021, violent insurrection at the US Capitol by Donald Trump's supporters, and of whom Trump has said they should be jailed.
Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal at a ceremony at the White House on Thursday to 20 people, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in the treatment of wounded soldiers, and two of the president's longtime friends, former Senator Ted Kaufman , D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
“President Biden believes these Americans are united by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”
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Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol against rioters or who helped secure the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried 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 said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and even campaigned with her, drawing Trump's ire. Biden has weighed whether to issue preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take power on January 20, still refuses to back down from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he will pardon the rioters once he takes power.
During an interview with NBC's “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney has done something that is inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the non-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming that they without evidence “and destroyed” the testimonies they collected.
“Frankly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Biden also presented the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader in the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for the use of tourniquets for 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 fought for equal pay.
He also presented the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored include former Sens. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, DY, who championed 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”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former state Judge Collins in Delaware Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was detained along 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, behind the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those who have performed “exemplary acts of service to their country or their fellow citizens.”
