President Joe Biden awards the second-highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Penny Thompson — the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by supporters of Donald Trump, and who Trump has said should be jailed.
Biden will award the Presidential Citizen's Medal to 20 people at a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president's old friends, former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Democrat. Deal, and Chris Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut.
“President Biden believes these Americans are connected by their shared morals and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifices.”
Biden last year honored people who participated in defending the Capitol from rioters, or who helped protect 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, led the House committee that investigated the rebellion.
Cheney later said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and even campaigned with her, angering Trump.
Biden was considering whether to preemptively pardon Cheney and others targeted by Trump.
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office on January 20, still refuses to back down from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he will pardon rioters once he takes office.
During an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney did something unforgivable, along with Thompson and the people on the unselected committee made up of political thugs and, you know, hacks,” claiming without evidence that they “deleted They “destroyed” the testimony they had collected.
“Frankly, they should go to prison,” he said.
Biden also gives the award to attorney Mary Bonotto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for the use of tourniquets in war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, the activist who led women's rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
He also gives the award to photographer Bobby Sakr, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Francis Vesco, president of the National Breast Cancer Alliance.
Other former lawmakers being honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, Democrat of New Jersey; former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; And former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
Biden will honor four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “Once Were Soldiers…And Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Luis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware State Judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsui Endo Tsutsumi, who was interned with other Japanese Americans during World War II and appealed the internment.
The Presidential Citizen's Medal, established 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 have “exemplified acts of exemplary service to their country or fellow citizens.”
