President Joe Biden is handing the second-highest civilian honor to fierce Donald Trump critics Liz Cheney and Rep. Bennie Thompson for their work leading the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony at the White House Thursday evening. Some of the recipients fought for same-sex marriage, one led the charge in treating wounded soldiers, and two others are close friends of the president: former Sens. Ted Kaufman and Chris Dodd.
“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”
The medal, created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the second-highest civilian award in the U.S., following the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is given to those who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
Last year, Biden handed the honor to some of those protecting the Capitol during the attack on democracy by supporters of President-elect Trump, and some of those who defended the vote of the American people when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
The final report from the committee found that Trump had criminally taken part in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election and that he didn’t take sufficient action to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
During the 2024 campaign, Cheney said she would back Vice President Kamala Harris and also joined her on the campaign trail. Trump has repeatedly attacked Cheney, leading Biden to consider whether to offer preemptive pardons to her and others the incoming president has targeted.
Even as he’s set to return to the White House on January 20th, Trump is holding firm to his lies that he won the 2020 election. He has also said that he would pardon some of the rioters following his return as president.
Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) speaks at a town hall with Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, at the Royal Oak Music Theatre on October 21, 2024 in Royal Oak, Michigan. She will receive the Presidential Citizens Medal Thursday evening (Getty Images)
Trump recently appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying that “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,”
He baselessly claimed they “deleted and destroyed” testimony and added: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”
Evan Wolfson and attorney Mary Bonauto, who both fought for same-sex marriage, will also receive the medal, as will Frank Butler, who set new standards for treating injuries in war, and Diane Carlson Evans, the founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation and an army nurse during the Vietnam War. Women’s rights and equal pay activist Eleanor Smeal is another honoree.
Other recipients include photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and National Breast Cancer Coalition President Frances Visco.
Other former lawmakers are also receiving the award, such as former Sens. Ben Bradley and Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas, as well as ex-Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who worked on gun safety issues after her son and husband were killed.
Biden is set to give the award posthumously to four people — former war correspondent Joseph Galloway, Louis Lorenzo Redding, an attorney and civil rights advocate, former Delaware judge Collins Seitz, and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was detained along with other Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
