President Joe Biden has decided to honor Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson by awarding them the second highest civilian medal for their leadership in the congressional investigation of the violent Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot incited by Donald Trump’s supporters, despite Trump’s calls for their imprisonment.

The ceremony to award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 individuals, including advocates for marriage equality, a healthcare innovator for wounded soldiers, and two close friends of the president, former Senators Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, is scheduled to take place at the White House on Thursday.

The White House expressed that President Biden views these honorees as individuals who exemplify common decency and a strong commitment to serving others. The administration believes that their dedication and sacrifices have contributed towards making the country a better place.

Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from the 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 Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that probed the insurrection.

Cheney later said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and even campaigned with her, raising Trump’s ire.

Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.

Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he takes office.

During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” 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 using tourniquets on 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’s also giving 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 being honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-NJ; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY, 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 “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 held 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 country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

It is awarded to those who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”