President Joe Biden is awarding the second highest civilian award to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson – The congressional investigation was directed by the member of parliament On January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump rioted in the US Capitol, saying Trump should be jailed.
Biden will present the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people at 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-Del. -Conn.
“President Biden believes these Americans are bound 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.”
Biden honored the people who participated last year When defending the Capitol from rioters, or helping protect the will of American voters in the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.
Cheney, a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, chaired the House committee that investigated the rebellion. Cheney said he would vote later Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris He also campaigned with her in the 2024 presidential race, drawing Trump’s ire. He has been considering whether to bid for Biden Preemptive pardons for 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 would pardon the insurgents when he takes office.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said“Cheney did something inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people at the political selection committee and, you know, the leads,” without proving that they “deleted and destroyed” the testimony they had collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Biden is also donating 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 in war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War and founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests and fought for equal pay in the 1970s.
The award also goes to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former members of Congress who have been honored are former Sen. Bill Bradley, DN.J.; former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who advocated for gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot dead.
Biden will honor four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, 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; Collins, former Delaware state judge. Seitz and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who were arrested along with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged their 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 given to “those who have performed exemplary acts of service to their country or their citizens”.
