By Shauneen Miranda | D.C. Bureau | Gov & Politics
WASHINGTON — More than two dozen U.S. House Democrats cast a spotlight Tuesday on a newly installed commemorative plaque for those who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
The members — led by New York U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the U.S. Committee on House Administration — led reporters on a visit to the honorific plaque, displayed on the Senate side of the Capitol close to a West Front entrance.
The plaque, quietly installed earlier in March in an area of the Capitol not usually visited by tourists, garnered criticism for its lack of public visibility, as well as a three-year delay to get it installed.
The memorial is also at the center of a lawsuit by two police officers who defended the Capitol that day.
“This is not in a prominent location — the actual law that we passed dictates where the location is — this is not it,” Morelle told States Newsroom.
Trump pardons
The honorary plaque was installed more than five years after the deadly riot, where a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump in January 2025 pardoned the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
The visitors Tuesday included Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was speaker of the House during the Jan. 6 insurrection and a target of the rioters.
A 2022 law mandated that an honorific plaque be installed within a year of its enactment and be placed “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has received flak for delaying the installation.
Merkley, Tillis push Senate action
The plaque installation came after the Senate in January unanimously agreed to a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to “prominently display” the plaque in a “publicly accessible location” in the Capitol’s Senate wing, “until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.”
Morelle praised that effort, led by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, but said “this isn’t a place where visitors will see it,” noting that “tours are not allowed down here” and “this is an emergency exit only.”
The New York Democrat said that if Democrats win back the majority in November, he would do everything he could to “make sure it’s moved to the place it’s supposed to, where Americans will come by and see it and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who defended us that day.”
Lawsuit
Meanwhile, Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, a current Metropolitan Police Department officer, sued the Architect of the Capitol over the plaque installation delay in June 2025.
Shortly after the plaque was displayed, the two argued on March 10 that their lawsuit should continue.
They said the Architect of the Capitol’s “decision to install the plaque in a part of the Capitol hidden from the public fails to comply with the text law, which requires the memorial to be displayed on the Capitol’s ‘western front,’ an exterior part of the building.”
