“President Biden has lengthy stated that America will be outlined by one phrase: prospects. These seventeen Individuals exhibit the facility of prospects and embody the soul of the nation — laborious work, perseverance, and religion,” the White Home stated in a press release final week.

The honorees vary from Biles, 25, essentially 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 within the Senate and was outspoken on the problem of fiscal accountability.

Different honorees embrace Sister Simone Campbell, former director of Community, a Catholic social justice group, who was instrumental in getting the Reasonably priced Care Act handed in 2010. Biden as soon as joined her “Nuns on the Bus” tour.

The president is also recognizing Washington, an actor, director and producer who has served because the nationwide spokesman for the Boys & Ladies Golf equipment of America for greater than 25 years; and Megan Rapinoe, a member of the U.S. girls’s nationwide soccer workforce since 2006 who has gained one Olympic gold medal and two World Cup championships. She can also be captain of OL Reign, a Seattle-based professional workforce within the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League.

Rapinoe’s exploits on the soccer discipline are matched by her activism off it. She has performed outstanding roles in pushing for equal pay for the ladies’s nationwide workforce and spoken out on social justice and LGBTQ points.

Rapinoe has been with the U.S. girls’s workforce in Mexico because it makes an attempt to qualify for the World Cup however she is anticipated to attend the ceremony.

Throughout his 4 years in workplace, President Donald Trump honored 24 folks, an inventory populated by practitioners of his favourite sport of golf — Tiger Woods, Gary Participant and Annika Sorenstam — and a few of his fiercest political allies, comparable to radio host Rush Limbaugh and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Biden’s listing of political honorees consists of Republicans and Democrats. Former consultant Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), co-founded Giffords, a nonprofit targeted on stopping gun violence, after she was shot within the head at a constituent occasion in Tucson in January 2011 and gravely wounded. She is married to former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who’s up for reelection this yr.

Biden served within the Senate with McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and embellished Vietnam Warfare veteran who died in 2018 of mind most cancers. McCain’s widow, Cindy, endorsed Biden in 2020 because the Democrat reversed the social gathering’s fortunes in Arizona, profitable the state. Cindy McCain is now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Businesses for Meals and Agriculture.

Jobs, who died in 2011 of most cancers, was the co-founder and chief govt of Apple, whose firm’s innovations revolutionized the lives of billions of individuals worldwide with its Mac computer systems, iPhone and the iPod.

The listing additionally consists of 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. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom; and Wilma Vaught, probably the most embellished girls within the historical past of the U.S. army.

Biden will honor Fred Grey, one of many first Black members of the Alabama legislature since Reconstruction and an lawyer who represented civil rights activists such because the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, together with the NAACP. Different honorees embrace Raúl Yzaguirre, a civil rights advocate who served as chief govt and president of Nationwide Council of La Raza for 30 years, and Diane Nash, a founding member of the Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

• Juliet García, the previous president of the College of Texas at Brownsville and the primary Mexican American lady to function a school president.
• Father Alexander Karloutsos, the previous vicar normal of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
• Sandra Lindsay, a New York critical-care nurse who served on the entrance traces of the pandemic response.
• Richard Trumka, the late president of the AFL-CIO.

Steven Goff contributed to this report.