Sponsors (8)
The bill provides formal acknowledgement and symbolic redress for the Wounded Knee massacre and preserves veterans' benefits and possession of medals, while creating reputational harms for some families, administrative burden, and political controversy over rescinding historic honors.
Tribal communities and descendants of Wounded Knee gain formal congressional recognition and removal of honors tied to the 1890 massacre, providing official acknowledgement of historical injustice and moral accountability.
Veterans who would lose honors retain their federal veterans' benefits because the bill explicitly preserves recipients' access to benefits despite rescission.
Recipients are allowed to keep the physical medals, avoiding immediate legal or logistical disputes over medal possession and reducing enforcement conflict.
Descendants and families of rescinded recipients (and some servicemembers associated with the 7th Cavalry) may suffer reputational harm and emotional distress from public removal of honors.
Removing names from official rolls and updating honor registries will create administrative complexity for military and federal records systems.
The congressional findings and rescission could fuel political controversy and public backlash, with some Americans viewing the actions as revisionist or divisive.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
All Medals of Honor awarded for the December 29, 1890 Wounded Knee engagement are rescinded and the recipients' names removed from the official Medal of Honor rolls.
Official title: Rescind each Medal of Honor awarded for acts at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 22, 2025 by Elizabeth Warren · Last progress May 22, 2025
Rescinds all Medals of Honor issued for the December 29, 1890 engagement at Wounded Knee Creek and directs the Secretary to remove the names of those recipients from the official Medal of Honor rolls. The law characterizes the engagement as a massacre that killed and injured large numbers of Lakota men, women, and children and notes tribal requests to revoke those awards; it does not require recipients to return physical medals or strip affected individuals of federal benefits.