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Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post A man uses a Bobcat compact track loader to plow snow before senators and representatives attend a joint session of Congress to certify the electoral college votes of the 2024 presidential election in the House chamber on Monday at the Capitol in Washington.
The Washington Post / Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro, Liz Goodwin
12:33 JST, January 7, 2025
Congress speedily certified the 2024 election results on Monday, as lawmakers gathered at the Capitol to formalize Donald Trump’s win despite a snowstorm that has ground most of the city to a halt.
The unremarkable, half-hour proceedings contrasted sharply with the last certification, when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters violently disrupted the event in an attempt to pressure lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify Joe Biden’s win.
This time, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over formalizing her own loss, as Democrats applauded each time a vote for her was tallied while Republicans cheered when Trump’s votes were counted. Members of both parties applauded as Harris announced her own 226 electoral votes compared with Trump’s 312.
“Congress certifies our great election victory today-a big moment in history. MAGA!” Trump wrote on social media.
After the proceedings, Harris appeared to reference the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when she told reporters gathered in the Capitol that American democracy “is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”
“Otherwise it is very fragile, and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis,” she continued. “And today, America’s democracy stood.”
No lawmaker challenged any state’s results. A slightly reduced number of senators and House members gathered in the House chamber Monday, possibly because of the snow. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who clashed with Trump four years ago over his efforts to overturn the election, was absent. Also missing was Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), whose travel would have involved going through Chicago, where the blizzard has wreaked havoc.
Congress is required by the Constitution to gather on Jan. 6 after an election to open and count the 538 electoral votes certified by the states. A new law passed in the wake of the 2021 Capitol riot clarifies that the vice president’s role in declaring the winner of the count during the process is ceremonial, and it raised the number of lawmakers required to lodge an objection to a state’s results.
Outside the Capitol, amid a snowstorm that is blanketing much of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, the 570-acre campus has been transformed into a fortified bunker, with reinforcements of about 4,000 officers brought in from police departments such as Baltimore’s and New York’s to guard the perimeter.
The fencing that stood for almost three months after the 2021 attack sprang up again a few days ago, with limited entry points for the office buildings across the street from the Capitol. Some 500 National Guard members are on standby.
It’s all a stark contrast to four years ago, when officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and the D.C. police were left on their own for hours trying to protect the Capitol. Their lines of defense were a set of interlocked bike rack barricades that were easily knocked over by the thousands of Trump supporters who charged up the hill to the building and began a medieval-style clash with the police.
Given that 2024’s losing party – Harris and her Democratic allies in Congress – has accepted the election results, Monday’s event was expected to conform to the much more ceremonial act held every four years.
In 2013, the House and Senate convened and wrapped up the certification in a speedy 25 minutes, according to the C-SPAN video of the event. In 2017, when some House Democrats tried to challenge Trump’s victory but couldn’t get Senate Democrats to support their effort, the event wrapped up in 35 minutes. “It is over,” then-Vice President Joe Biden said to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), shutting down her bid to contest Trump’s election.
Eight years later, Harris took up Biden’s role in that count and joined the small group of vice presidents who have overseen the certification of their own defeat. Most recently, in 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the certification of his incredibly narrow loss to George W. Bush, a race that some House Democrats also wanted to contest, given Florida’s pivotal role in deciding the outcome and the legal challenges filed over how the state handled its count.
Some Republicans praised how Harris handled the proceedings. “Vice President Harris handled that with grace,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin). “She really did, so give credit where credit’s due. That must have been very difficult for her. She should be complimented on her decorum and poise.”
Democrats recalled the events of Jan. 6, 2021 – particularly about a dozen who were trapped in the gallery above the House floor, cowering in fear as they heard the gunshot that killed a Trump supporter trying to enter the chamber.
“I remember every detail of that terrifying day as if it were yesterday,” Rep. Bradley Schneider (Illinois), one of those Democrats, said in a statement early Monday.
On Monday, he was on hand in the Capitol and planned to support the election results just as he did four years ago. “I will again carry out my Constitutional responsibility to certify the 2024 election and the will of the American people,” Schneider said.
Trump has pledged to pardon, in his first hour in office, many of the more than 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the riot. Trump’s inauguration as president is scheduled for Jan. 20 on the West Front of the Capitol.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer called any such pardons a “dangerous endorsement of political violence.”
“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,” he said.
Democratic leaders spotlighted the events of the last certification, with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats, commemorating the fourth anniversary of the deadly assault on the Capitol.
Margaret Kibben, who was sworn in as House chaplain three days before the 2021 riot, led a prayer at the small memorial, which was held at the door where the Capitol was first breached shortly after 2 p.m. that day.
“We pray now that on this day, four years later, that you would enter into the space in a much different way,” Kibben said, “in a way that allows for peace and for conversation and for reconciling, for an opportunity for us to look back on our memories, wherever we were that day, whether we were on the floor, whether we’re carrying a camera or a microphone, whether we were in uniform, protecting those whom we serve, whomever we were, whomever we find ourselves to be today, we ask that you would in some way transform our members.”
No Republican lawmakers attended the memorial. Jeffries said he hopes that Americans see the peaceful transition of power and that it will “serve as the example of how we as a country should move forward.”
