Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in a procedure that unfolded without question on Monday, in stark contrast to the violence on January 6, 2021 when his mob of supporters stormed the Capitol.
Lawmakers met under tight security and a snowstorm to meet the date required by law to certify the election. The entire process passed quickly and without disturbances. But the legacy of January 6, 2021 leaves an extraordinary fact: the candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is rightfully returning to power.
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over the process as befits her office, read the recount, including that of her own defeat.
The chamber erupted in applause, first from Republicans for Trump’s 312 electoral votes, then from Democrats for Harris’s 226.
In half an hour the process was done.
But as lawmakers met, layers of tall black fences flanked the U.S. Capitol complex in a stark reminder of what happened four years ago, when a defeated Trump sent his mob to “fight like hell” in what It became the most horrific attack on the headquarters of Congress. American democracy in 200 years.
Republicans who questioned the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden are now expressing greater confidence in the US election after he defeated Harris.
And Democrats, frustrated by Trump’s victory, nevertheless accept the choice of American voters; House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries says his side of the aisle is not “infested” with election deniers.
One by one, tellers read aloud the state results as senators and representatives sat in their seats in the House chamber. Vice President-elect JD Vance joined his former colleagues and was later surrounded by handshakes, hugs and congratulatory photos.
Trump said online that Congress was certifying a “HUGE” election victory and called it “A GREAT MOMENT IN HISTORY.”
The day’s return to an American tradition that begins the peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a renewed sense of authority. He denies losing four years ago, reflects on staying beyond the constitutional two-term limit in the White House and vows to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes over the Capitol siege.
What’s not clear is whether January 6, 2021 was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or whether this year’s calm becomes an outlier. The United States is struggling to confront its political and cultural differences as democracy around the world is threatened. Trump calls January 6, 2021 a “day of love.”
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“We must not allow ourselves to become complacent,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the multi-ideological nonprofit Shield Democracy.
He and others have warned that returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to resign from office “is an unprecedentedly dangerous step for a free country to voluntarily take.”
Biden, speaking Sunday at the White House, said: “We have to get back to the basic, regular transfer of power.” What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a genuine threat to democracy. I am hopeful that we are beyond that now.”
Still, American democracy has proven resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, came together to affirm Americans’ choice.
With pomp and tradition, the day unfolded as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with the states’ election certificates, boxes that staff frantically grabbed and protected as Trump’s mob stormed the building. the last time.
Senators walked across the Capitol (which four years ago had been filled with roving rioters, some defecating and threateningly calling out to leaders, others engaged in hand-to-hand combat with police) to the House chamber to begin certifying the vote.
Harris presided over the count, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certified her own defeat, much like Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
He stood on the stand where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly taken to safety last time as the mob approached and lawmakers tried to put on gas masks and flee, and gunshots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter trying to climb. through a broken glass door into the chamber.
House chaplain Margaret Kibben, who delivered a prayer during the chaos four years ago, made a simple request as the chamber opened to “shine your light in the darkness.”
There are new rules of procedure after what happened four years ago, when Republicans, parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent, questioned the results that their own states had certified.
Under changes to the Electoral Count Law, it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, rather than just one in each chamber, to raise any objection to election results. With security as tight as the Tremendous Bowl or the Olympics, the Capitol is at the highest security level possible. Tourists were not allowed.
But none of that was necessary.
Republicans, who met with Trump behind closed doors at the White House before January 6, 2021, to hammer out a complex plan to challenge his election loss, this time accepted his victory.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House impeachment in 2021, said people at the time were very shocked by the outcome of the election and that there were “a lot of claims and accusations.”
This time, he said, “I think the victory was very decisive. … It smothered most of that.”
Democrats, who have raised token objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush and which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, had no intention of objecting.
“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said on the first day of the new Congress, to applause from Democrats in the chamber.
Last time, far-right militias helped lead the mob to storm the Capitol in a scene resembling a war zone. Officers have described being crushed, pepper-sprayed and hit with Trump flagpoles, “sliding in other people’s blood.”
The leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to long prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home confinement or other penalties.
Democrats condemn that day, but many Republicans remain firm in their opinions. Republican Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia said he was grateful that Trump had promised pardons.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection that day, but was acquitted by the Senate. At the time, Republican Party leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege, but said his guilt was up to the courts.
Federal prosecutors later issued a four-count indictment against Trump for working to overturn the election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to narrow the case once the Supreme Court ruled. that a president has broad immunity. for actions taken in office.
Smith last month dropped the case after Trump won re-election, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Biden, in one of his salient events, awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, who had been chairwoman and vice chairwoman of the congressional committee that carried out an investigation on January 6, 2021.
Trump has said those who worked on the January 6 committee should be locked up.
Related Press journalists Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
