General Discussion

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the officers who protected the Capitol when it was under attack by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6 five years ago.

The resolution requires the Architect of the Capitol “to prominently display, in a publicly accessible location in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol, a plaque honoring the members of law enforcement responding on January 6, 2021, until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.”

The bipartisan resolution was introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., refused to hang the plaque as required by a 2022 federal law. Johnson’s office has argued that the law was “not implementable” because the legislative language from that bill said the plaque should display the names of officers who protected the Capitol, while the plaque that was produced named the law enforcement agencies that responded to the Capitol siege.

Johnson played a key role in President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, leading a legal brief that sought to disenfranchise voters in four key swing states that Joe Biden won. The Supreme Court in December 2020 rejected the eventual Texas lawsuit that Johnson and other Trump allies backed.......

“It’s so important that we fulfill the vision of the 2022 law and get this plaque up to honor those police officers,” Merkley said on the Senate floor Thursday. “What this resolution is saying is we in the Senate will put it up here in a publicly available space until a deal can be reached with the House of Representatives to display it. Both chambers have to agree on that, but to put it up here in the Senate in a place where the public can see it, that we can do here on our own.”

The Senate vote comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack, which led to criminal charges against Trump that were dropped after he was elected in 2024. Former special counsel Jack Smith, who brought those charges, recently told lawmakers that Trump was “the most culpable and most responsible person” in the conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election, and that prosecutors compiled “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn his electoral loss to Biden.