The U.S. Congress certified Monday that Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November presidential election, setting the stage for his inauguration in two weeks to a second nonconsecutive four-year term in the White House.
Under U.S. law, sitting vice presidents preside over the Electoral College count of the election results from each of the country’s 50 states, leaving Harris in the position of certifying her own loss.
Four years after Trump tried to upend his 2020 reelection loss to Joe Biden and Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to block the certification of Biden’s victory, Monday's ratification of the vote was ceremonial, not calamitous.
Harris ahead of time described her role in a video message 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."
She passed the documents certifying the vote in each of the states to four lawmakers who read the long-known results, with Trump winning the Electoral College vote, 312-226.
Harris, the Democratic candidate, conceded the election after the outcome of the Nov. 5 vote became clear, with Trump, the Republican nominee, winning all seven highly contested political battleground states that were decisive in the election.
Harris joined 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.
The official Electoral College vote count in Congress was long a formality in the election process, but four years ago turned into chaos as about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, injuring about 140 police officers, ransacking congressional offices, vandalizing the building and sending lawmakers rushing for safety.
In 2021, Trump demanded that his vice president, Mike Pence, disqualify votes from battleground states based on false claims that he had been cheated out of reelection by fraudulent voting regulations and vote counts.
But Pence refused, with Trump claiming, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done."
Hours after the rioting at the Capitol was quelled by law enforcement authorities, Pence eventually presided over his own reelection loss to another term as vice president and Trump’s presidential reelection defeat.
"I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said two years later, blaming Trump for the rioting at the Capitol. "And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable."
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, are likely to soon play a leading role in the first moments of the new Trump presidency.
The Justice Department says that nearly 1,600 people have been charged with an array of offenses stemming from the rioting four years ago, with many of them already having completed short prison terms on relatively minor charges while others are still facing years behind bars for serious attacks on law enforcement officials.
Trump has downplayed the events of the day and characterized those detained as “patriots” and “hostages.”
He has said he intends to pardon many of those arrested and convicted, possibly within hours of his Jan. 20 inauguration. But the president-elect has not said whether he plans to issue a blanket pardon for everyone who has been charged or yet to be accused or more selective pardons based on individual circumstances of the allegations the rioters faced.
While no rioting was expected on Monday, authorities have prepared just in case, erecting tall metal barriers around the Capitol complex.
Biden had been highlighting the need for a peaceful process.
Speaking Sunday at the White House, Biden called what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, “one of the toughest days in American history.”
“We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” Biden said.
He added that Trump’s conduct four years ago, which included repeated false claims that he won the election, "was a genuine threat to democracy.”
“I’m hopeful we’re beyond that now,” Biden said.
