President-elect certified by Congress Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in a proceeding that went uncontested Monday, in stark contrast to the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, as his mob of supporters stormed the Capitol.
Lawmakers gathered under heavy security and a snowstorm to meet the legally required date to certify the election. The whole process went quickly and smoothly. But the legacy of January 6, 2021 leaves an extraordinary fact: the candidate who tried to overturn the previous elections won this time and legitimately returns to power.
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over the proceedings in her office, read the tally, including that of her own defeat.
The room applauded, first Republicans for Trump’s 312 electoral votes, then Democrats for Harris’ 226.
In half an hour the process was complete.
But as lawmakers gathered, layers of tall black fencing flanked the U.S. Capitol complex, a stark reminder of what happened four years ago, when a defeated Trump sent his mob “to fight like hell » in what became the most horrific attack on the seat of state. American democracy in 200 years.
Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden are now expressing greater confidence in the US election following his loss to Harris.
And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s victory are nonetheless accepting the choice of American voters, with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying his side of the aisle is not “infested” with election deniers.
One by one, the state’s results were read aloud by the poll workers as senators and representatives sat 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 “GREAT” election victory and called it a “GREAT MOMENT IN HISTORY.”
Today’s return to an American tradition that kicks off the peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a revived sense of authority. He denies losing four years ago, plans to stay beyond the constitutional two-term limit in the White House and promises to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who have pleaded guilty or been convicted of related crimes at the Capitol headquarters.
What is unclear is whether January 6, 2021, was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or whether this year’s calm becomes the outlier. The United States is struggling to come to terms with its political and cultural differences while global democracy is under threat. Trump calls January 6, 2021 “the day of love.”
Receive national news daily
Get the day’s top news, politics, business and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
“We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the interideological nonprofit Protect Democracy.
He and others warned that returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated reluctance to give up his post “is an unprecedentedly dangerous decision that a free country can make voluntarily.”
Biden, speaking at the White House on Sunday, said: “We need to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power. What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a real threat to democracy.” I hope we’re past that now.
Yet American democracy proved resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, came together to affirm the American people’s choice.
With pomp and tradition, the day unfolded as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with state election certificates – boxes that staff frantically grabbed and was protecting when Trump’s mob stormed the building last time.
The senators marched through the Capitol — which four years ago was filled with roaming rioters, some defecating and calling menacingly at leaders, others engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police — until ‘to the House to begin certifying the vote.
Harris presided over the counting, as is the case for the vice president, and certified his own defeat – much like Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
She stood on the dais where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly pulled to safety last time as crowds closed in and lawmakers sought to put on gas masks and flee, and Shots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who attempted to climb. through a broken glass door into the bedroom.
House chaplain Margaret Kibben, who delivered a prayer during the chaos four years ago, made a simple request at the chamber’s opening: “Shine your light into the darkness.”
New procedural rules were put in place after what happened four years ago, when Republicans, repeating Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent, challenged the results certified by their own states.
Under changes to the election counting law, a fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, must now raise objections to election results. With security as tight as the Super Bowl or the Olympics, the Capitol is at its highest possible security level. No tourists were allowed.
But none of that was necessary.
Republicans, who met with Trump behind closed doors at the White House before January 6, 2021 to develop a complex plan to challenge his election defeat, this time accepted his victory.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House challenge in 2021, said people at the time were very surprised by the outcome of the election and that there were “a lot of complaints and of allegations.”
This time he said: “I think the victory was very decisive. …That snuffed out most of that.
Democrats, who have raised symbolic objections in the past, notably during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush and was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, had no intention of doing so. object.
“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 House.
Last time, far-right militias helped the mob break into the Capitol in a war zone-like scene. Officers described being run over, pepper sprayed and beaten with Trump flag poles, “slipping in other people’s blood.”
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Many others were sentenced to prison, probation, home confinement or other sanctions.
Democrats denounce this day, but many Republicans remain firm in their views. Republican Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia said he was grateful that Trump had promised pardons.
Trump was impeached by the House for inciting insurrection that day, but was acquitted by the Senate. At the time, Republican Party Leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege but said culpability rested with the courts.
Federal prosecutors later issued a four-count indictment against Trump for trying to overturn the election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special prosecutor Jack Smith was forced to reduce the case once the Supreme Court ruled that a president had broad immunity. for the measures taken in power.
Last month, Smith withdrew the case after Trump’s re-election, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Biden, in one of his outgoing acts, awarded the Presidential Citizens’ Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who had served as president and vice president of the congressional committee which conducted an investigation on January 6, 2021.
Trump said those who worked on the January 6 committee should be incarcerated.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.