Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump’s election under the tightest national security level possible. Layers of tall black fencing flank the U.S. Capitol complex in a stark reminder of what happened on January 6 four years ago.
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The day’s return to a U.S. tradition that launches 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 that he lost four years ago, muses about staying beyond the Constitution’s two-term White House limit and promises to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who’ve pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.
And he commended Vice President Kamala Harris for her role certifying her rival’s win.
He wrote on X that, “The peaceful transfer of power is the hallmark of our democracy” and that, “today, members of both parties in the House and Senate along with the vice president certified the election of our new president and vice president without controversy or objection.”
He also congratulated Trump on his win.
She passed copies of each state’s results to lawmakers, who read them out loud. When they finished, Harris announced the final results, and smiled tightly as Republicans applauded Donald Trump’s victory.
The entire process lasted less than 30 minutes.
“The chair declares this joint session dissolved,” Harris said. “Thank you.”
After going through all the certificates for 50 states and D.C., Congress anticlimactically certified the 2024 election for Trump and Vance.
It happened with little fanfare with some members taking breaks from looking at the dais to check their phones or engage in conversations with their neighbors.
Harris ended it with the words: “The chair declares this joint session dissolved.”
She shook hands and kissed a few members on the cheek before being swept away.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced the tally as President-elect Donald Trump receiving 312 votes and Harris herself receiving 226 votes.
Her announcements of both received raucous cheers in the chamber.
When she announced Trump’s victory, she smiled tightly as Republicans gave a standing ovation.
Democrats who were trapped in the House gallery four years ago when Donald Trump’s supporters were trying to break down the doors to the chamber posed for a photo in the same spot ahead of this year’s Jan. 6 certification.
Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal posted it on X and wrote “we will not forget.”
The vice president-elect sat calmly as the chamber clapped for the announcement that his home state cast its electoral votes for the Trump-Vance ticket.
As the results are announced, she stands with her hands clasped in front of her.
Lawmakers clapped after the reading of each state’s results.
The first state where electoral votes went to Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz was California and received a round of applause from Democrats.
The electoral certificate for Georgia going to Trump and Vance received an outburst of cheers from a few members of the GOP delegation, including staunch Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
He was greeted by Republican members. Vance will be in attendance as a senator as his and President-elect Donald Trump’s victory is certified by Congress.
Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the Senate were in tow.
It’s a reunion for many, including new senators Adam Schiff of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona who were until last week members of the House.
But it’s unlikely there will be any voting Monday.
The only time Congress votes on the Electoral College results is when someone lodges a successful objection to a state’s result. With Democrats not challenging the results of this election, the session should proceed mainly as a counting exercise.
Congress voted twice on the results of the election in 2021, rejecting Republican challenges to President Joe Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Attendance on both sides of the aisle appears low after Washington received heavy snowfall overnight into Monday.
There was mild applause for Vice President Kamala Harris as she arrived on to the House floor to a flurry of empty seats.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says it’s “shamefully, utterly outrageous” that President-elect Donald Trump is considering pardons for those who participated in the breach of the Capitol four years ago.
“It would send a message to the country and to the world that those who use force to get their way will not be punished,” said Schumer, as lawmakers gathered Monday to certify Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election.
Schumer paid tribute to law enforcement officers working at the Capitol four years ago and said pardoning the rioters would be reckless and an insult to the memory of those whose lives were lost in connection with that day.
As most of his colleagues deflected or wrote off the anniversary of the Jan 6 insurrection, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican, honored the “remarkable courage and sacrifice” of the Capitol police “who defended the Capitol that day.”
“Their courage in the face of danger upheld the ideals of our nation and reminded us of the profound cost of defending freedom,” he wrote on the social media site X.
Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., described the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol four years ago as “a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building” and praised President Donald Trump’s vow to pardon rioters who stormed the Capitol that day on social media.
“Since then, hundreds of peaceful protestors have been hunted down, arrested, held in solitary confinement, and treated unjustly,” Collins wrote on X. “Thankfully, President Trump has announced that, on day one of his presidency, he will grant pardons to nonviolent defendants.”
More than 1,250 people have pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.
Collins’ statement downplayed the violence and disruption to the certification of the 2020 election four years ago. He described the armed mob as comprised of “thousands of peaceful grandmothers” in his post.
Collins was elected to Congress in the 2022 midterms and campaigned on false claims that President Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election. He’s known for often posting controversial, ironic and hard right statements online.
The four year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is being marked Monday by a number of congressional Democrats, including current and former leaders as Republicans remained mostly silent as they prepare to certify the election of the man who incited that very mob.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker when the insurrection happened, marked the occasion, saying the attack “shook our Republic to its core.”
“We must never forget the extraordinary courage of law enforcement officers on January 6th who stood in the breach and stared down the insurrectionists to protect the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution,” the California lawmaker said in a statement.
Her successor, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed her sentiment, saying the “American people must never be allowed to the forget the events” of Jan. 6. He added that “history will always remember the attempted insurrection and we will never allow the violence that unfolded in plain sight to be whitewashed.”
Inside the Capitol, reminders of the violence are increasingly hard to find.
Scars on the walls have been repaired. Windows and doors broken by the rioters have been replaced. And there's no plaque, display or remembrance of any kind.
In some ways, it’s like the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, that shook the foundations of American democracy, never happened.
▶Read more about how Jan. 6 is—and isn’t—being remembered
On the morning of the certification, the U.S. Capitol was covered in snow with roads blocked off for miles as police hoped for a quiet day in Congress.
At certain points, there were more officers than staff as many lawmakers were expected to be absent Monday due to the inclement weather. It’s a stark difference from what transpired four years ago today as lawmakers, staff and reporters hid from a violent mob that overtook the Capitol building, leaving mayhem in their wake.
President Joe Biden is decrying what he calls an “unrelenting effort” to downplay a mob of Donald Trump supporters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block certification of the 2020 election — seeking to contrast that day’s chaos with what he promises will be an orderly transition returning Trump to power for a second term.
In an opinion piece published Sunday in The Washington Post, Biden recalled Jan. 6, 2021, writing that “violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol.”
“We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault,” Biden wrote. “And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year.”
▶Read more about Biden’s opinion piece
Under heavy security, lawmakers in the snowy Capitol will gather at 1 p.m. ET to count the electoral votes in the 2024 election and declare Donald Trump the winner.
The joint session, which takes place on Jan. 6 every four years, is the final step after the Electoral College meets in December to officially elect the winner of the White House.
At the center of the process are sealed electoral certificates from each state, which are brought into the House chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion. Those same boxes were rushed to safety four years ago as rioters breached the Capitol.
Bipartisan representatives of both chambers will read the results out loud and do an official count. No challenges to the results are expected this year, which means the process should move quickly.
Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, will preside over the session and certify her defeat to Trump.
Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump urged supporters to head to the Capitol to protest Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“Will be wild!” Trump promised on Twitter a few weeks before Jan. 6, 2021. And it was.
This year, the only turbulence preceding the quadrennial ratification of the presidential election resulted from House Republicans fighting among themselves over who should be speaker.
▶Read more on why the calm may be illusory
It’s the largest prosecution in Justice Department history — with reams of evidence, harrowing videos and hundreds of convictions of the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Now Donald Trump’s return to power has thrown into question the future of the more than 1,500 federal cases brought over the last four years.
Jan. 6 trials, guilty pleas and sentencings have continued chugging along in Washington’s federal court despite Trump’s promise to pardon rioters, whom he’s called “political prisoners” and “hostages” he contends were treated too harshly.
In a statement Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Justice Department prosecutors “have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity.”
▶ Read more about Jan. 6 prosecutions
Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday is set to preside over the certification of her defeat to Donald Trump four years after he tried to stop the very process that will now return him to the White House.
In a video message, Harris described her role as a “sacred obligation” to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
“As we have seen, our democracy can be fragile,” she said. “And it is up to each of us to stand up for our most cherished principles.”
Harris will be joining a short list of other vice presidents to oversee the ceremonial confirmation of their election loss as part of their role of presiding over the Senate. Richard Nixon did it after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Al Gore followed suit when the U.S. Supreme Court tipped the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
▶ Read more about Vice President Kamala Harris
What’s unclear is if Jan. 6, 2021, was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or if this year’s expected calm becomes the outlier. The U.S. is struggling to cope with its political and cultural differences at a time when democracy worldwide is threatened. Trump calls Jan. 6, 2021, a “day of love.”
“We should not be lulled into complacency,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the cross-ideological nonprofit Protect Democracy.
He and others have warned that it’s historically unprecedented for U.S. voters to do what they did in November, reelecting Trump after he publicly refused to step aside last time. Returning to power an emboldened leader who’s demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.
The fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has a new focus as lawmakers brace for the prospect that President-elect Donald Trump may soon pardon many of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes for their actions related to the riot.
▶Read more about Trump’s promises to issue pardons
As Congress convenes during a winter storm to certify President-elect Donald Trump’s election, the legacy of Jan. 6 hangs over the proceedings with an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to power.
Lawmakers will gather noontime Monday under the tightest national security level possible. Layers of tall black fencing flank 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 became the most gruesome attack on the seat of American democracy in 200 years.
No violence, protests or even procedural objections in Congress are expected this time. Republicans from the highest levels of power who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden have no qualms this year after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory nevertheless accept the choice of the American voters. Even the snowstorm barreling down on the region wasn’t expected to interfere with Jan. 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.
▶ Read more about what to expect today
Snow falls at the Capitol ahead of a joint session of Congress to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the presidential election, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Security fencing surrounds Capitol Hill as snow blankets the region ahead of a joint session of Congress to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the presidential election, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Security fencing surrounds Capitol Hill as snow blankets the region ahead of a joint session of Congress to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the presidential election, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Snow falls at the Capitol ahead of a joint session of Congress to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the presidential election, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
