The US Congress certified Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on Monday in a highly symbolic event. It’s been four years since he incited a violent mob to disrupt a similar ceremony to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump lost to Democrats in the November election, presided over a joint session of the House and Senate to certify the results. As the certification confirming Trump’s victory was brought to the House floor, Harris took to the stage alongside Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Four tellers, Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Morrell of New York and Representative Brian Still of Wisconsin, will take turns voting for each state’s Electoral College. It announced the results and declared the certificates “formal and authentic.” Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was sitting in the front row of the House chamber when he and Trump’s victory was officially declared.
After Harris officially announced the final results, Republicans praised Trump’s victory. Harris remained calm throughout the session, but smiled slightly as Democrats in the chamber applauded her 226 electoral votes.
“I strongly believe that American democracy is only as strong as our will to fight for it,” Harris told reporters after the joint session concluded. “Otherwise, it becomes very fragile and cannot withstand moments of crisis. And today, American democracy has stood up.”
As expected, Democrats did not challenge the results in any way, since long-standing convention dictates that certification should be merely a formality in a peaceful transfer of power. But the lawsuit comes amid fears of a repeat amid false claims of chaos similar to January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters tried to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. , which took place amid unprecedented security measures by the U.S. Capitol and Washington, D.C., police. It was stolen.
In an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Sunday, Biden implored Americans to remember the painful lessons learned after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We should be proud that our democracy withstood this attack. And we should be glad that we will not see another such shameful attack this year,” Biden wrote. “But we must not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the saying that a nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. A repeat of what happened four years ago. cannot be accepted.”
To prevent potential chaos on Monday, the U.S. Capitol Police took additional precautions, including deploying new equipment and increasing personnel to ensure a smooth verification process. Severe weather in Washington, which was covered in snow Monday morning due to Winter Storm Blair, may have further deterred protesters.
“We cannot afford to be surprised again,” U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Munger said, referring to how police were outnumbered and overwhelmed by a rampaging mob four years ago.
In 2021, members of Congress and the Senate were forced to evacuate as rioters ransacked offices and searched key members of Congress, including then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Harris’s predecessor, Vice President Mike Pence, who has the same constitutional role of presiding over the certification, did not comply with Trump’s demands as rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence.” , and was chased from the building by security. Accept the results and instead cast the election your way.
However, it is highly unlikely that a rebroadcast from four years ago will take place on Monday. Democrats accepted Trump’s electoral and popular vote victory without reservation. They have indicated they will not even symbolically challenge the electors, as some electors did after their 2016 victory, when they lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but won through the electoral system. I was doing it.
This time, Trump won both the electoral vote (312 to 226) and the popular vote by a margin of about 2.5 million votes.
sign up for The Stakes — Presidential Transition
Introducing the aftermath of the US election and the transition to President Trump
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may include information about charities, online advertising, and content sponsored by external parties. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and are subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
After newsletter promotion
“I think it’s going to be a pretty normal transfer, and I think it’s going to be respectful of the wishes of the American people, as opposed to what happened on January 6, 2021,” Morrell told Politico. “I think it’s worth saying again and again.”
More than 1,500 people have been charged with crimes in connection with the 2021 attack, which left five people dead that day and four more in the days and months that followed, including one who committed suicide. This includes police officers. Approximately 1,000 participants were convicted.
President Trump has promised to grant presidential pardons to some of the January 6 attackers starting in the “first hour” of his second term, which begins at the end of this month, but Munger said such a decision would require the U.S. officials warned that could jeopardize the safety of the entire law enforcement community.
“What message does that send?” Manager told The Washington Post on Sunday. “What message does this send to police officers across the country if there are people who don’t believe that a conviction for anything less than assault on a police officer should be upheld given what we ask of them every day?” Will I be able to send it?”
A meaningful anniversary rally was not held outside the Capitol on Monday as snow continued to fall, but instead a small number of Trump supporters gathered on the lower floor of the Washington Hyatt Regency down the street to celebrate the Jan. 6 He announced his vision for the future. participants.
The conference, hosted by defendant Jake Lang from prison on January 6, was attended by several other insurrectionists, as well as Mike Lindell, influencer Isabella Maria DeLuca, and the self-proclaimed “Chief of Revenge.” ” Prominent right-wing figures such as Ivan Reichlin also participated.
While the event was a far cry from the thousands of people who stormed the Capitol on that fateful day in 2021, the situation could dampen the speaker’s fiery rhetoric, especially given Reichlin’s vision of revenge. There wasn’t. Reichlin, a former Green Beret and leader of the movement to overturn the 2020 election results, said Trump’s first order of business will be to declare a broad pardon plan for all insurrectionists.
“Everyone,” Reichlin said on the sidelines of the meeting. “Including the violent people who are in[prisons]. They’ve already had their moment, OK, because it’s all political. They’ve been overcharged.”
This article headline was amended on January 6, 2025 to correct the year of the Capitol riot from 2020 to 2021, as disclosed in the text.
