Welcoming the recipients in the White House East Room, Biden known as them “an extraordinary, extraordinary group of Americans” who attempt for the concept of America as the “the cause of freedom shines like the sun to light up the future of the world.”
The honorees vary from Biles, 25, the most embellished U.S. gymnast in historical past, who has advocated for sexual assault victims, to former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), 90, the sharp-tongued politician and governor’s son who served 18 years in the Senate and was outspoken on the concern of fiscal duty.
Of Biles, Biden joked, “Today, she adds to her medal count of 32.”
Other honorees embrace Sister Simone Campbell, former director of Network, a Catholic social justice group, who was instrumental in getting the Affordable Care Act handed in 2010. Biden as soon as joined her “Nuns on the Bus” tour.
“Sister Simone Campbell is a gift from God,” Biden stated.
The president additionally acknowledged Washington, an actor, director and producer who has served as the nationwide spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for greater than 25 years. Biden stated that Washington was unable to attend the occasion and that he could be giving him the award at a later date. A White House official later stated Washington’s absence was due to a “covid result.”
“Denzel Washington, one of our greatest actors in American history. Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Tony Awards, wide acclaim and admiration from audiences and peers around the world,” Biden stated.
Biden praised Megan Rapinoe, a member of the U.S. ladies’s nationwide soccer group since 2006 who has received one Olympic gold medal and two World Cup championships. She can also be captain of OL Reign, a Seattle-based professional group in the National Women’s Soccer League.
Rapinoe’s exploits on the soccer discipline are matched by her activism off it. She has performed distinguished roles in pushing for equal pay for the ladies’s nationwide group and has spoken out on social justice and LGBTQ points.
“Megan is a champion for the essential American truth that everyone, everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone,” Biden stated.
During his 4 years in workplace, President Donald Trump honored 24 folks, an inventory populated by practitioners of his favourite sport, golf — Tiger Woods, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam — and some of his fiercest political allies, corresponding to radio host Rush Limbaugh and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Biden’s checklist of political honorees contains Republicans and Democrats. Former consultant Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) co-founded Giffords, a nonprofit centered on stopping gun violence, after she was shot in the head at a constituent occasion in Tucson in January 2011 and gravely wounded. She is married to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former astronaut, who’s up for reelection this yr.
From foster care challenges to gun violence, the recipients have witnessed up shut some of the darkest components of the American expertise. But their triumphs over adversity are what makes them worthy of the nation’s best honor, Biden stated.
“Gabby is one of the most courageous people I have ever known,” he stated.
“One of the most decent, stand-up, genuine guys I’ve ever served with — and I serve with a lot of senators — is this guy,” Biden stated, referring to Simpson. “Alan Simpson is the real former United States senator from his beloved Wyoming.”
Biden served in the Senate with McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and embellished Vietnam War veteran who died in 2018 of mind most cancers. McCain’s widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden in 2020 as the Democrat reversed the social gathering’s fortunes in Arizona, successful the state. Cindy McCain is now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
McCain, in an interview Thursday with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, stated the honor is especially significant on condition that her late husband was a prisoner of conflict in Vietnam for 5 and a half years.
“The fact that it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom means more to us, I think, than most people,” McCain stated. “John was denied his freedom for so long. … He was without freedom as a prisoner of war. When he was released, his respect for not only freedom itself, but … how we maintain it, is a large part of who he was and what he stood for.”
Jobs, who died of most cancers in 2011, was co-founder and chief government of Apple, whose firm’s innovations revolutionized the lives of billions of folks worldwide.
The checklist additionally contains Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father who has been an advocate for the rule of legislation and non secular freedom whereas serving on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and Gen. Wilma Vaught, one of the most embellished ladies in the historical past of the U.S. army.
Biden honored Fred Gray, one of the first Black members of the Alabama legislature since Reconstruction and an lawyer who represented civil rights activists corresponding to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, together with the NAACP. Other honorees embrace Raúl Yzaguirre, a civil rights advocate who served as chief government and president of National Council of La Raza for 30 years, and Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Biden praised Gray’s contribution to serving to dismantle unjust legal guidelines, working as one of the civil rights motion’s most revered attorneys.
“Fred’s legal brilliance of strategy desegregated schools and secured the right to vote,” the president said. “… An ordained minister, he imbued a righteous calling that touched the soul of our nation.”
- Juliet García, the former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville and the first Mexican American woman to serve as a college president.
- Sandra Lindsay, a New York critical-care nurse who served on the front lines of the pandemic response.
- Richard Trumka, the late president of the AFL-CIO.
Steven Goff and John Wagner contributed to this report.