Rebuking Johnson, N.J. House Dems display plaque commemorating officers who defended Capitol on January 6

In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a law that required a plaque commemorating the law enforcement officers who protected Congress on January 6, 2021 to be hung in the U.S. Capitol building by March 2023. But more than two years later, and with a completed plaque all ready to go, House Speaker Mike Johnson has declined to display it, angering many Democrats and some of the Capitol police officers themselves.

House Democrats, including the nine Democrats in the New Jersey delegation, are now taking matters into their own hands. Democratic members made replicas of the plaque and put those replicas outside their offices, displaying them next to their nameplates in the House’s three office buildings for any passers-by to see; all nine New Jersey offices are adorned with the new plaque.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the plaque reads. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.” (It also thanks a number of different police departments by name, one of them being the New Jersey State Police.)

The plaque, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) said, is particularly personal for the New Jersey delegation given that an officer who died following the attack, Brian Sicknick, was from South River, New Jersey.

“Officer Brian Sicknick, who grew up in Middlesex County, died after being attacked while defending this institution,” Pallone said in a statement this morning. “The refusal to hang this plaque as required by law, combined with the pardons of his assailants, is a stunning insult to his sacrifice and to law enforcement officers everywhere.”

The issue of whether the plaque will ever be hung is one that has been percolating for a while, and it took on added significance when President Donald Trump returned to the White House and pardoned those involved in the January 6 attack during his first days in office.

At the beginning of this year, a big group of House Democrats, two of them from New Jersey, sent a letter to Johnson insisting that the plaque needed to be hung. And earlier this month, two of the officers who defended the Capitol filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order that the plaque be displayed, as required by the 2022 law.

Regardless of how those efforts pan out, though, New Jersey’s Democrats said that they wanted to make sure the plaque sees the light of day.

“Speaker Johnson is trying to block us from putting up a plaque in the Capitol to honor the officers who served January 6th – including the New Jersey State Police,” Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) said on social media. “We’re hanging it up anyway.”

This story was updated at 5:27 p.m. to note that Democrats beyond just the New Jersey delegation are hanging the replica plaque.