Biden awarded the Medal of Freedom to Clinton, Soros, and Messi.

The award was given to notable figures including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, entrepreneurs and philanthropists George Soros, Tim Gill, and David Rubenstein, anthropologist Jane Goodall, soccer player Lionel Messi, and basketball player Magic Johnson, musician Bono, actors Michael J. Fox and Denzel Washington, journalist and media executive Anna Wintour, and fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

Four out of the 19 received the medal posthumously. They are former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968; George Romney, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Nixon administration, who passed away in 1973; civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who died in 1979; and Ashton Carter, the Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration, who died in 2022.