WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in proceedings that unfolded Monday without violence or mayhem, in stark contrast to the Jan. 6, 2021, violence as his mob of supporters stormed the Capitol.
Lawmakers convened under heavy security and a snowstorm to meet the date required by law to certify the election, but the legacy of Jan. 6 leaves an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to power.
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. It is the tightest national security level possible.
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over proceedings as the role of the office, read the tally.
The chamber broke into applause, first Republicans for Trump, then Democrats for Harris.
The whole process happened swiftly and without unrest. One by one, the state results were read aloud by the tellers as senators and representatives sat in seats in the House chamber. Vice President-elect JD Vance joined his former colleagues. Within half an hour the process was done.
No violence, protests or even procedural objections in Congress this time. Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden have no qualms this year after he defeatedHarris.
And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory nevertheless accept the choice of the American voters. Even the winter snow blanketing the grounds didn’t interfere with Jan. 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.
Trump said in a Monday post online that Congress was certifying a “GREAT” election victory and called it “A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY.”
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 have pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.
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 returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to give up the office “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take.”
Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, said, “We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” the president said. What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a genuine threat to democracy. I’m hopeful we’re beyond that now.”
Still, American democracy has proven to be resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, was coming together to affirm the choice of Americans.
