How will Congress certify Trump's electoral college win?
US lawmakers will gather on Monday for a joint session of Congress to certify Donald Trump's presidential election win - a procedure that happens every four years after the vote and two weeks before the president's inauguration.
Last time, the routine went awry when a group of Trump's supporters rioted at the Capitol to try to stop the formal vote-counting and overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
This year's certification will bring Trump a step closer to returning to the White House, after the Republican won the 2024 contest against Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Because of her role as leader of the Senate, Harris will oversee the certification.
Federal law states that Congress must gather on 6 January to certify the election results.
Members open sealed certificates from America's 50 states, each of which contains a record of that state's electoral votes.
The results are read out loud and an official count is tallied.
The president of the Senate - currently Harris - presides over the joint session of Congress. She will formally declare the winner of the presidential election.
Routine turned to violence on 6 January 2021: the last time a joint session of Congress was held to certify election results.
After Trump made unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him, hundreds of rioters smashed through barricades to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden's win.
Trump urged Mike Pence, who was then vice-president, to have "courage" and allow states to "correct their votes".
After the mob filled - and then emptied - the halls of the US Capitol building, members of Congress returned and certified the election, and Pence rejected Trump's request. Several deaths were blamed on the day's violence.
In the years since, Trump and many of his supporters have maintained his baseless claims about the 2020 election. He has vowed to pardon some of those convicted of offences over the riot when he returns to the presidency.
While there is some lingering anxiety in Washington DC, this year's certification is expected to go off without a hitch, and Harris has not disputed the results.
This will not be the first time that a defeated election candidate has had to oversee the certification process.
In 2021, Pence oversaw the certification of the Biden-Harris victory, and in 2001, then-Vice-President Al Gore oversaw the certification of President George W Bush.
Short answer: yes. But it does not happen very often.
Members of Congress are allowed to object after a state's certificate is read out. But in order for the presiding officer to hear the objection, it needs to be in writing and signed by one-fifth of the members of the House (the lower chamber) and one-fifth of the Senate (the upper chamber). Previously, an objection only needed to be raised by one member from each chamber.
The new policy came about in 2022, in an attempt to make objections more difficult. If an objection does meet the new requirements, the joint session would be suspended for the House and Senate to consider the objection separately. Both chambers would have to reach a majority vote for the objection to be sustained.
Challenges to electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania were rejected by both the House and the Senate in 2021.
Once the certification is complete, there is only one step left in the process before Trump is officially president again: the inauguration.
On 20 January, the Trump family, former presidents and members of the public will gather on the west front of the Capitol for the official swearing in of the 47th president.
Congress is ready to certify Trump’s election win, but his Jan. 6 legacy hangs over the day
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
“Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican who helped lead Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said Sunday on Fox News Channel.
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 it is 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 has demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.
Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, called Jan. 6, 2021, “one of the toughest days in American history.”
“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, will come together to affirm the choice of Americans.
With pomp and tradition, the day is expected to unfold as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with the electoral certificates from the states — boxes that staff were frantically grabbing and protecting as Trump’s mob stormed the building last time.
Senators will walk across the Capitol — which four years ago had filled with roaming rioters, some defecating and menacingly calling out for leaders, others engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police — to the House to begin certifying the vote.
Harris will preside over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certify her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
She will stand at the dais where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly rushed to safety last time as the mob closed in and lawmakers fumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and shots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter trying to climb through a broken glass door toward the chamber.
There are new procedural rules in place in the aftermath of what happened four years ago, when Republicans parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent challenged the results their own states had certified.
Under changes to the Electoral Count Act, it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, to raise any objections to election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement is on high alert for intruders. No tourists will be allowed.
But none of that is expected to be necessary.
Republicans, who met with Trump behind closed doors at the White House before Jan. 6, 2021, to craft a complex plan to challenge his election defeat, have accepted his win this time.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House floor challenge in 2021, said people at the time were so astonished by the election’s outcome and there were “lots of claims and allegations.”
This time, he said, “I think the win was so decisive.... It stifled most of that.”
Democrats, who have raised symbolic objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to George W. Bush and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, have no intention of objecting. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said the Democratic Party is not “infested” with election denialism.
“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said on the first day of the new Congress, to applause from Democrats in the chamber.
“You see, one should love America when you win and when you lose. That’s the patriotic thing to do,” Jeffries said.
Last time, far-right militias helped lead the mob to break into the Capitol in a war-zone-like scene. Officers have described being crushed and pepper-sprayed and beaten with Trump flag poles, “slipping in other people’s blood.”
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home confinement or other penalties.
Those Republicans who engineered the legal challenges to Trump’s defeat still stand by their actions, celebrated in Trump circles, despite the grave costs to their personal and professional livelihoods.
Several including disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and indicted-but-pardoned Michael Flynn met over the weekend at Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago estate for a film screening about the 2020 election.
Trump was impeached by the House on the charge of inciting an insurrection that day but was acquitted by the Senate. At the time, GOP leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege but said his culpability was for the courts to decide.
Federal prosecutors subsequently issued a four-count indictment of Trump for working to overturn the election, including for conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to pare back the case once the Supreme Court ruled that a president has broad immunity for actions taken in office.
Smith last month withdrew the case after Trump won reelection, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Biden, in one of his outgoing acts, awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who had been the chair and vice chair of the congressional committee that conducted an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has said those who worked on the Jan. 6 committee should be locked up.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
Winter storm will not delay Trump election certification in Congress, House leader says
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - A massive winter storm moving across the United States will not keep the U.S. Congress from meeting on Monday to formally certify Republican Donald Trump's election as president, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday.
"The Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6 at 1 p.m. - so, whether we’re in a blizzard or not we’re going to be in that chamber making sure this is done," Johnson told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" in an interview.
Johnson said he hoped there would be full attendance despite the storm and that he had encouraged lawmakers to stay in the city.
Forecasts called for heavy snow and high winds from the Central Plains to the mid-Atlantic states, the National Weather Service said. Severe weather advisories were issued across the eastern half of the country, including blizzard warnings in parts of Kansas.
In Washington, mixed snow and sleet accumulations were expected to be between three and seven inches (7 to 18 cm), promising a difficult commute and possible closings of schools, government and businesses.
Bad winter weather can wreak havoc in the Washington metropolitan area, which has seen mild winters in recent decades and has at times been unprepared for accumulations of snow or ice. The city ordered public schools closed on Monday and school cancellations were also announced in several suburban Virginia counties. School systems in neighboring Maryland were likely to follow suit.
Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives returned to Washington on Friday after the winter break and Republicans gathered on Saturday with Johnson to discuss legislative priorities. Republicans won control of both the chambers in November's election.
Other leaders stressed they were not contemplating a weather delay.
"No change to the schedule," said Lauren Fine, communications director for Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
The certification process, usually a formality, was upended four years ago when supporters of Trump violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the 2020 election.
Trump has continued to falsely claim his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Biden and the Democrats say they will honor the 2024 election results and proceed with certification.
Four years after his supporters invaded the US Capitol, Trump is more powerful than ever
Late on a day of chaos and blood on January 6, 2021, it was unimaginable that Donald Trump — who summoned a mob to Washington and told the crowd to “fight like hell” — would get anywhere near the presidency again.
Yet on Monday, exactly four years after his supporters invaded the US Capitol, beat up police officers and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Congress will convene to again confirm another election.
The democracy that Trump tried to desecrate will enshrine his return to power.
A joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes from his November victory will rekindle chilling memories of the horror and fear felt by anyone who was in the US Capitol four years ago.
The ceremonial process that will clear the way for Trump’s swearing in as the 47th president in two weeks will also highlight an extraordinary moment in political history in a nation where Trump is more powerful and popular than he’s ever been. A plurality of voters decided that despite his egregious conduct four years ago, he was the best option to lead the country until January 2029.
January 6, 2025, will mark the most stunning political comeback in US history, and will usher in a new administration that could feature the president-elect’s most extreme stress test of the Constitution so far.
It will also underscore the Democratic Party’s failures in convincing voters that Trump represents a mortal threat to the country’s democracy and that they had the answers to Americans’ economic struggles and concerns over immigration.
Americans made a choice in November, and even though he conjured a day of infamy four years ago, they picked Trump.
The congressional certification of Trump’s victory — over which his vanquished opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, will preside — will reward an extraordinary effort by the ex-president, his supporters and the conservative media machine to whitewash what happened on one of the darkest days in US history.
Trump, with a storm of misinformation, has convinced millions of Americans of his lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Republicans have rebranded the January 6 rioters as “tourists,” persecuted victims and heroes, despite the hundreds of convictions handed down by courts. Trump has promised to pardon those found guilty over the attack. He launched his 2024 campaign with a recording of the National Anthem by the “J6 choir,” sung by prisoners jailed for their role in the riot. And he rebranded January 6, 2021, a “beautiful day” and a “day of love.”
This could hardly be more misleading. The truth of January 6 was told in shocking details by witnesses and law enforcement officers to a congressional select committee when the House was still under Democratic control. “It was carnage. It was chaos,” said Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer whose testimony was interspersed with footage of her being knocked unconscious by Trump’s supporters and who described slipping on the spilled blood of her colleagues. “I am not combat trained, and on that day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat,” Edwards said in June 2022.
While this was unfolding, senators and representatives were running for their lives, Trump’s supporters breached the Senate chamber and Secret Service agents hustled then-Vice President Mike Pence to safety as the crowd chanted for him to be hanged.
But by shrugging off his second impeachment over January 6, 2021, reestablishing his dominance over the GOP and winning a subsequent election despite multiple criminal indictments, Trump avoided paying a meaningful political price for his assault on democracy. When he won a nonconsecutive second term, he went from being a political aberration to one of the most significant figures in American history. Along the way, he skillfully portrayed attempts to bring him to justice for his transgressions as persecution, creating a political rallying effect. He’ll return to the White House as an even more powerful leader, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling arising from one of his legal cases that gives the president substantial criminal immunity for official acts committed while in office.
Most profoundly, Trump will send a message down through the ages that a president who refuses to accept the result of a free and fair election and who incites an attack on the Capitol can get away with it — and regain power.
Yet, the process of certifying Trump’s election win will also be a reaffirmation of democracy. And Biden and Harris, in one of their final acts in office, are restoring a tradition of smooth handoffs between administrations denied to them by Trump.
Biden said Sunday this had been deliberate.
“If you notice, I’ve reached out to, to make sure the smooth transition. We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” the president told reporters at the White House.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Sunday evening, he also warned of the dangers of forgetting what happened four years ago.
“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand,” Biden wrote without naming Trump.
“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed,” he continued, adding that he has invited his successor to the White House on the morning of January 20 and that he will be attending Trump’s inauguration.
Unlike in 2020, the losers — this time, the Democrats — have not lied about election fraud, drawn up alternative slates of electors or called for a crowd to come to Washington to protest false claims of a stolen election.
“He led an insurrection, but the people have now voted and our job tomorrow, which is also January 6, is to implement the will of the people,” Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It’s the peaceful transition of power. So, Democrats and Republicans will come together tomorrow to certify those results … that’s what we do. That’s what America has done, and that’s what we will do on the Inauguration Day.”
The electoral certification of Trump’s win will be a bitter moment for Democrats. And it will highlight the party’s painful reality that it couldn’t produce a candidate in 2024 to beat a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, once-convicted ex-president who tried to burn down democracy to stay in power.
If the core purpose of Biden’s 2020 campaign was to purge Trump from American political life, then his presidency was a failure, whatever other achievements burnish his legacy. Biden’s decision to run for reelection, which came disastrously unstuck in a CNN debate that laid bare the brutal reality of his diminished capacity, helped set Democrats up for failure. And Harris’ inability to coin a convincing case for how she’d help Americans at a time of high prices and economic insecurity opened the door to Trump’s return to the Oval Office. She never sufficiently distanced herself from the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border or its insistence that an inflationary crisis was merely “transitory.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that voters hadn’t ignored what happened on January 6, 2021, but had made a judgment on what was most important to them. “I wouldn’t say that the American people disregarded this. They just had a different view as to what was in their interest, economically and the rest,” the California Democrat said.
Trump, with his searing anti-immigration rhetoric, succeeded in painting his chaotic presidency as a kind of lost golden age, despite the scenes of violence and lawlessness that he conjured at its end
The country indisputably took a step to the right in the 2024 election, toward Trump’s populist nationalism, even in many blue-leaning districts and cities. Trump won all seven swing states and became the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote, even if he fell marginally below a majority of votes cast. His claims of a historic mandate are exaggerated, but that’s unlikely to thwart his promise to use power to mount a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, wreak revenge on his political enemies and attempt a crackdown on the media. Republicans now control both the House and the Senate and will have the backstop of an often-supportive Supreme Court majority.
Trump’s triumph has left Democrats adrift, seeking a new message and wondering how they can connect with working Americans again. And the party is facing the reality that a plurality of voters preferred a former president who tried to destroy democracy to stay in power to their candidate. Sufficient voters seemed to decide that they’d prefer a strongman who better voiced their grievances than an alternative who warned that Trump was a threat to democracy.
With their warnings about Trump’s threat to constitutional values, Democrats found themselves in the position of defending a government and an establishment in which many Americans had lost faith, after years of foreign wars and the hollowing out of the blue-collar industrial economy.
This sense of the end of an ancient regime was reflected Saturday when Biden made the latest of his postelection jabs at Trump. He awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to recipients whom many Democrats see as embodying the democratic order that Trump repudiates. They included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016. Biden also posthumously recognized assassinated former Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, whose vaccine-skeptic son split with Democrats and his family and is Trump’s controversial choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. He also awarded the medal to former Michigan Gov. George Romney, a Republican and the late father of former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s last and most prominent critics in the GOP.
After the ceremony, Biden implied that despite Trump’s imminent arrival in the White House, the fight to save democracy would go on. “Let’s remember, our sacred effort continues, and to keep going, as my mother would say, we have to keep the faith,” he said.
The party that once prided itself on defending global democracy has, however, long since moved on, profiting from its denial of the events of January 6, 2021, which has helped Republicans vault back to power.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, keeping the gavel in a razor-thin victory on Friday, is already laying the groundwork to implement Trump’s ambitious agenda of strict immigration enforcement, tax cuts and slashes to the size of the federal government despite his tiny House majority.
Johnson has also changed his mind on the urgency of upholding the certification of electoral votes.
Four years ago, he was a key player in Trump’s attempts to subvert the result of a democratic election. Even after the bloody riot, the Louisiana Republican voted against the awarding of electoral votes to Biden in Pennsylvania and Arizona based on false claims of election fraud.
Now, however, he says nothing must get in the way of enshrining Trump’s win.
“We got a big snow storm coming to DC, and we encourage all of our colleagues, do not leave town, stay here, because, as you know, the Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6, at 1 p.m. so whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to making sure this is done,” he told Fox News on Sunday.
“We cannot delay that certification.”
US Congress to meet to certify Trump's election, four years after Capitol riot
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is set to meet in snow-covered Washington on Monday to formally certify Donald Trump's election as president, four years after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block the certification of his 2020 loss.
Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, and had warned throughout his 2024 campaign that he harbored similar concerns until his Nov. 5 defeat of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The joint session of Congress is set to go forward even as a winter storm bears down on the nation's capital, threatening to drop about 6 inches (15 cm) of snow and snarl travel.
Unofficial results show Trump winning 312 electoral college votes to Harris's 226. Republicans also captured a majority in the U.S. Senate and held a narrow edge in the House of Representatives, which will give Trump leeway in implementing his planned agenda of tax cuts and a crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally when he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
Democrats are not expected to try to block certification of Trump's victory on Monday.
"We must renew our commitment to safeguarding American democracy," No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark said in a statement. "As elected leaders, our loyalty must be to the Constitution, first and always. We are here to honor the will of the people and the rule of law."
Trump has also said he plans to pardon some of the more than 1,500 people charged with taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, when a mob fought with police, smashing its way in through windows and doors and chanting "Hang Mike Pence," referring to Trump's then-vice president, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden's victory.
In the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the Capitol, rioters surged past police barricades, assaulting about 140 officers and causing more than $2.8 million in damage. Multiple police officers who battled protesters died in the weeks that followed, some by suicide.
As a result of that day's violence, Congress passed legislation late in 2022 bolstering guardrails to ensure that the certification process is administered in a legal manner.
Many of these changes were directly in response to Trump's actions leading up to and including Jan. 6, 2021.
For example, the new law makes clear that the vice president's role is largely ceremonial.
Any objections to a state's results must now be submitted by at least one-fifth of the members of the House and the Senate before triggering debates over the objections. The House has 435 members and the Senate has 100.
Previously, it had required just one member from each chamber to object to a state's certification.
Meanwhile, the law specifies that the choice of electors must occur according to state laws enacted prior to Election Day, with governors of the states submitting lists of electors. Trump and his surrogates in 2021 had attempted to recruit alternate electors sympathetic to his cause.
A large security fence has been erected around the Capitol complex ahead of Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Trump's election certification set to begin on anniversary of 2021 Capitol riot
Congress will convene Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, four years to the day after Trump's supporters rioted inside the U.S. Capitol to protest his defeat in the 2020 election.
While Trump falsely denied his loss to President Joe Biden and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, Monday's joint session to confirm Trump's return to power is expected to avoid repeating any similar violence or chaos.
Harris, who will preside over the proceedings, has not challenged the election outcome or spread false conspiracy theories to undermine confidence in the results, as Trump did.
Nor have Harris and her allies pursued a flurry of legal actions to try to overturn the election outcome, as Trump and his allies did.
Democrats are also not expected to raise objections to the electoral results during the certification proceedings themselves, as some Republican senators and a majority of GOP House members did in 2021.
Harris, in a recorded video obtained first by NBC News, said her role is a "sacred obligation" and that she is "guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people."
But while the process may be reverting to its traditionally ceremonial role in the peaceful transition of power, the scars left from 2021 can still be seen.
The Capitol complex will be under heavy security as lawmakers meet to certify the election. The Homeland Security Department in September designated Jan. 6, 2025, a "National Special Security Event" for the first time, prompting law enforcement at all levels to enact a comprehensive security plan around the Capitol.
The certification events will also take place while hundreds of people are in jail for their involvement in the 2021 riot. The Justice Department's efforts to investigate and prosecute rioters — the largest such probe in U.S. history — have yielded charges against more than 1,580 defendants and convictions for about 1,270 of them.
Trump, who was impeached for a second time for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, has vowed to pardon its participants — possibly including those who assaulted police officers, though he said there "may be some exceptions."
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday morning that DOJ prosecutors "have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity."
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
How Congress will certify Trump’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6
WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressional joint session to count electoral votes on Monday is expected to be much less eventful than the certification four years ago that was interrupted by a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who tried to stop the count and overturn the results of an election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
This time, Trump is returning to office after winning the 2024 election that began with Biden as his party’s nominee and ended with Vice President Kamala Harris atop the ticket. She will preside over the certification of her own loss, fulfilling the constitutional role in the same way that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did after the violence subsided on Jan. 6, 2021.
Usually a routine affair, the congressional joint session on Jan. 6 every four years is the final step in reaffirming a presidential election after the Electoral College officially elects the winner in December. The meeting is required by the Constitution and includes several distinct steps.
A look at the joint session:
Under federal law, Congress must meet Jan. 6 to open sealed certificates from each state that contain a record of their electoral votes. The votes are brought into the chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion.
Bipartisan representatives of both chambers read the results out loud and do an official count. The vice president, as president of the Senate, presides over the session and declares the winner.
The Constitution requires Congress to meet and count the electoral votes. If there is a tie, then the House decides the presidency, with each congressional delegation having one vote. That hasn’t happened since the 1800s, and won’t happen this time because Trump’s electoral win over Harris was decisive, 312-226.
Congress tightened the rules for the certification after the violence of 2021 and Trump’s attempts to usurp the process.
In particular, the revised Electoral Count Act passed in 2022 more explicitly defines the role of the vice president after Trump aggressivelypushed Pence to try and object to the Republican’s defeat — an action that would have gone far beyond Pence’s ceremonial role. Pence rebuffed Trump and ultimately gaveled down his own defeat. Harris will do the same.
The updated law clarifies that the vice president does not have the power to determine the results on Jan. 6.
Harris and Pence were not the first vice presidents to be put in the uncomfortable position of presiding over their own defeats. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the counting of the 2000 presidential election that he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to gavel several Democrats’ objections out of order.
In 2017, Biden as vice president presided over the count that declared Trump the winner. Biden also shot down objections from House Democrats that did not have any Senate support.
The presiding officer opens and presents the certificates of the electoral votes in alphabetical order of the states.
The appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate, members of both parties, then read each certificate out loud and record and count the votes. At the end, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority votes for both president and vice president.
After a teller reads the certificate from any state, a lawmaker can stand up and object to that state’s vote on any grounds. But the presiding officer will not hear the objection unless it is in writing and signed by one-fifth of each chamber.
That threshold is significantly higher than what came before. Previously, a successful objection only required support from one member of the Senate and one member of the House. Lawmakers raised the threshold in the 2022 law to make objections more difficult.
If any objection reaches the threshold — something not expected this time — the joint session suspends and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must uphold it by a simple majority vote. If they do not agree, the original electoral votes are counted with no changes.
In 2021, both the House and Senate rejected challenges to the electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Before 2021, the last time that such an objection was considered had been 2005, when Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, objected to Ohio’s electoral votes, claiming there were voting irregularities. Both the House and Senate debated the objection and easily rejected it. It was only the second time such a vote had occurred.
After Congress certifies the vote, the president is inaugurated on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 20.
The joint session is the last official chance for objections, beyond any challenges in court. Harris has conceded and never disputed Trump’s win.
Capitol heavily secured for election certification as Trump's Jan. 6 pardon plans remain largely a mystery
WASHINGTON — Four years after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, members of Congress will be under heavy security Monday as they certify Trump's 2024 election victory, ensuring the first president to face federal felony criminal charges will return to the White House in two weeks.
On Jan. 20, Trump will walk through the Lower West Tunnel — the location of some of the worst violence of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — to take the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States. Trump, who himself faced four felony charges in connection with Jan. 6 and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, has vowed to pardon some untold number of Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office.
But details of Trump's plans are uncertain even as the final days of President Joe Biden's term tick away.
More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and about 1,270 have been convicted in a sprawling investigation that has resulted in more than 660 prison sentences, according to statistics released Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Prison sentences have ranged from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison, a sentence imposed on former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Hundreds more Jan. 6 defendants have been sentenced to probation, most of whom were convicted of low-level offenses like unlawful parading.
In September, the federal government declared the Electoral College certification a National Special Security Event, heightening the level of security at the Capitol. Though there are no major Democratic protests planned for Monday, the government put severe security measures in place ahead of this week that will remain as law enforcement agencies deal with other upcoming events, including Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
On Saturday morning, about 36 hours before a snowstorm was expected to hit Washington, workers at the Capitol were placing additional layers of high fencing around the Capitol grounds, including on the west front, which Trump supporters took over during the Capitol attack four years ago.
Trump, like many of his fellow Republicans, underwent a massive shift in his rhetoric since the Jan. 6 attack, from calling the Capitol breach a "heinous attack" in 2021 to describing it as a "day of love" last year. The effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 has been aided by numerous conspiracy theories that Trump allies on Capitol Hill have propagated.
The president-elect said that Jan. 6 defendants were subject to “a very nasty system” and that he would be “acting very quickly” on Jan. 6 pardons.
Trump has said there “may be some exceptions” to his Jan. 6 pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy,” but he did not rule out pardoning people who had admitted assaulting police officers. The Trump transition team has said pardons will be issued “case by case,” but Trump has said the “vast majority” of Jan. 6 defendants should not be in jail.
The U.S. attorney's office said that just eight pretrial defendants remain in jail in Washington, while all the other incarcerated Jan. 6 defendants are serving the sentences imposed after their convictions.
While more misdemeanor cases against low-level Jan. 6 defendants seem unlikely in a Trump administration, it is not yet clear how pending cases against people accused of assaulting law enforcement officers will be handled.
Online “sedition hunters” who have already aided the FBI in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases say more than 200 people suspected of committing assaults on law enforcement officers or members of the media have been identified but have not yet been arrested. Among them are more than 60 people whose images are featured on the FBI website that lists them as wanted for assault.
Biden implored lawmakers Sunday to speak truthfully about the Capitol attack, in which more than 140 police officers were injured and after which some law enforcement officers died, at an event with newly elected Democratic lawmakers.
“Now, it’s your duty to tell the truth, to remember what happened and not let Jan. 6th be rewritten,” Biden said. “It’s one of the toughest days in American history.”
Congress counts electoral votes today. What to know as lawmakers finalize the 2024 presidential election results.
Washington — The House and Senate are convening Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election.
It comes four years after a violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol to prevent Congress from affirming President Biden's win. There appear to be no plans by Democrats to stand in the way of certifying Trump's win.
Here's what to expect this time.
Senators and members of the House will meet in a joint session at 1 p.m. to tally the electoral votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Vice President Kamala Harris will preside in her role as president of the Senate.
The vice president will read aloud the electoral votes, and then Congress counts each state's results to affirm Trump's victory. Trump won 312 Electoral College votes, far surpassing the 270 needed for victory. Harris won 226 votes.
The process is typically a ceremonial step before a president is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Congress is required by law to count the electoral votes on Jan. 6 after each presidential election. However, the date has been temporarily changed by law when Jan. 6 fell on a weekend. In 2013, Congress affirmed that President Barack Obama won the election on Jan. 4, rather than on Jan. 6, which was a Sunday.
After the Capitol riot in 2021, Congress moved to reform the Electoral Count Act — an 1887 law that governed the counting of electoral votes — to prevent another effort to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022, which clarified that the vice president's role in presiding over the joint session of Congress is ceremonial. It also made it more difficult for members of Congress to challenge a state's electors by raising the threshold to 20% of members of each chamber. Previously, just one member of the House and one senator were needed to raise an objection.
Following Trump's defeat in the 2020 election, he and his allies fueled unfounded allegations of fraud and argued that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to accept or reject electoral votes. Pence denied he had such authority.
As Congress was tallying the votes in 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, joined Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to object to Mr. Biden's votes from Arizona.
The joint session was then suspended and the House and Senate separately debated the objection. The process was abruptly interrupted as a violent mob of protesters made their way into the building after Trump urged them to march to the Capitol.
Hours later, after rioters were cleared from the building, both chambers voted to reject the objection that would have thrown out Arizona's electoral votes for Mr. Biden. The House and Senate then reconvened in a joint session to continue the count. They later were forced to split and debate another objection to Pennsylvania's results, which was brought by Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Both chambers also rejected the attempt to throw out the state's votes for Mr. Biden.
This time, it will be nothing more than a complaint. In the last presidential election, a member from each chamber needed to object to the count to force lawmakers to debate and vote on whether to accept or reject a state's results. The Electoral Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2022, raised the threshold to one-fifth of members in each chamber.
A new Donald Trump era: Congress to certify election victory four years after Jan. 6 riot
WASHINGTON – No one expects an angry mob to show up this time.
Four years to the day that supporters of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the certification of the 2020 election, Congress will usher in a new Trump era on Monday when it gathers to count each state’s electoral votes and officially declare him the winner of last year’s presidential contest.
This time, the proceeding is expected to go off smoothly. No rioters storming the Capitol. No one pushing past police barricades and beating officers with makeshift weapons. No lawmakers running through the Capitol’s corridors in fear of their lives. No sitting president pressuring a vice president to thwart the process.
“I think it will almost be a nonevent,” predicted Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
The difference between then and now is Trump.
Four years ago, the Republican refused to acknowledge he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, claiming the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress was to certify the results of that election, Trump held a rally on the Ellipse with the White House in the background and urged thousands of his supporters to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” They did, setting in motion the most violent attack against the seat of government since the War of 1812.
But Trump eagerly embraced the results of last year’s election after he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Though Trump had again warned of the possibility of election fraud, he went suddenly silent about those dire predictions after his victory.
Heightened security:Security measures pick up around DC ahead of Jan. 6, Carter funeral, Trump Inauguration Day
Congressional Democrats are not expected to challenge the election results when they gather to certify them on Monday.
“I think it’s safe to say that even the Democrats heard from the American people that this is what they wanted,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.
Even so, hanging over the certification process will be unsettling memories of the assault on the Capitol, uncertainty over whether Trump will follow through on his promise to pardon those involved and questions of how the Jan. 6, 2021 attack will be viewed through the broader lens of history.
“For a significant chunk of the population, including me, it will be remembered as a frightening attempt to use force to overrule the results of a presidential election,” said Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard professor who taught a class on the Jan. 6 attacks.
For a different segment of the population, “it may be remembered as a day of courage and heroism,” Keyssar said.
Either way, Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term, will immediately earn a couple of places in the history books when he begins his second term on Jan. 20. He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to leave office in defeat and return four years later. He also will become the first president to enter office with a criminal record after his conviction in New York last May on 34 felonies involving hush-money payments to a porn star.
Trump was indicted on federal charges tied to his mishandling of classified documents after he left office and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the attack on the Capitol. But three weeks after last year’s election, a judge acting on the request of special counsel Jack Smith dismissed the charges that Trump tried to steal the election in 2020. Smith also effectively ended the classified documents case by dropping his appeal of a separate judge’s dismissal of those charges.
Federal prosecutors did win the conviction of more than 1,000 people who were involved in the Jan. 6 attack. At least 645 were jailed and another 145 were serving home detention as of Dec. 6, according to the Justice Department.
Trump has vowed repeatedly for years to pardon defendants charged in the attack, leading some to ask judges to postpone trials, sentencings or incarceration until after he is inaugurated.
Some defendants have asked permission to attend the inauguration while awaiting trial.
Tommy Tatum of Mississippi, who was charged with using a flagpole to intimidate police at the Capitol, asked the court to let him travel to Washington on Jan. 6 to attend a news conference and on Jan. 20 to attend the inauguration.
“The Government is punishing Mr. Tatum by preventing him from attending a press conference as a journalist and from expressing his support for President Trump by attending his inauguration, clearly in violation of Mr. Tatum’s First Amendment rights,” Tatum’s lawyers wrote in their request.
“There is no legitimate government objective to prevent Mr. Tatum from visiting D.C.,” the lawyers argued.
U.S. District Judge John Bates of the District of Columbia denied Tatum’s request, saying his alleged conduct on Jan. 6 was “particularly violent.”
The travel restriction is necessary to ensure community safety, Bates wrote.
Trump hasn’t spelled out what he will do. He voiced sympathy during the campaign for nonviolent offenders and decried long sentences. But he hasn’t detailed how he would weigh pardons for nearly 1,600 people charged and 1,000 people convicted in the riot, which has left his allies and critics waiting to see what he will do on his first day in office.
“The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime, and I will sign their pardons on Day One,” he told a Wisconsin rally in September.
For Trump, pardoning the defendants would amount to the concluding chapter of the Jan. 6 saga, said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University and the author of a book on Trump’s first term as president.
“He survived all the prosecutions, and he survived the electoral threat that that posed to his future and to the MAGA future,” Zelizer said. “Then he won reelection, and he won it with the popular vote and with all the swing states. A pardon is the final step, saying, ‘You’re free.’”
Congressional Democrats warn pardoning those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection would send the wrong message.
“The pardon power should be used to correct procedural or substantive injustices,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and a former professor of constitutional law.
“No one has identified any injustice in the prosecution of people who violently assaulted police officers, who were engaged in seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States,” Raskin said. “I would view the promise of pardoning hundreds of convicted insurrectionists as a continuation of the assault on American constitutional democracy.”
Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., said granting a pardon to the Jan. 6 defendants, particularly those who committed acts of violence, would send a signal that “violent law-breaking will be allowed as long as it is done under a MAGA banner.”
“That would open the floodgates to chaos all across the country because there will be a whole lot of people out there, including deranged and violent individuals, who think that Donald Trump will give them a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” Magaziner said.
Magaziner said he recognizes the vast majority of Trump supporters are peaceful, patriotic Americans, “but we're not talking about peaceful patriotic Americans when we talk about the Jan. 6 rioters. We’re talking about criminals and many of whom committed acts of violence.”
For some lawmakers, Trump’s threats to investigate, prosecute and imprison his perceived enemies are another cause for alarm. During a December interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said members of a congressional committee that spent 18 months investigating his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection should go to jail.
That’s not how government works, Raskin said.
“The whole point of the American Constitution is we have no kings here,” Raskin said. “We have no monarchs. We have no queens, no emperors. We don't put people in jail because the president doesn't like them.”
Honoring the investigators:Biden gives Jan. 6 committee leaders Cheney, Thompson Presidential Citizens Medals
Trump’s return to power will likely result in a revisionist history in terms of how Jan. 6 is remembered among a segment of the American electorate, Keyssar said. In Trump’s view and that of many of his supporters, he said, Trump's victory in November validated many of his grievances about the 2020 election.
“There's a large segment of the American population which equates democracy as the protection of the rights and powers for some people but not others – and, thus, it was legitimate to have this attack on the (election) procedures because the procedures were leading to the wrong outcome,” Keyssar said.
In many ways, Keyssar said, it’s reminiscent of how regional differences shaped Americans’ understanding of the Civil War for more than a century and, in some cases, even today.
“In the South,” he said, “they continue to call it the war of northern aggression.”
5 things to know for Jan. 6: Severe weather, Presidential transition, New Orleans attack, Ukraine, Golden Globes
Today is the last day for the public to pay their respects in Atlanta to former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away at the age of 100 last week. His casket will then be flown to Washington, DC, where he will lie in state at the US Capitol until his official funeral service on Thursday.
Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.
More than 55 million Americans are under winter storm alerts across the US as a powerful weather system sweeps through the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions. Tens of thousands of people in Kansas and Missouri are without power and several stores are running out of essential goods. The severe weather is hammering parts of Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, where snow-covered roads caused numerous accidents over the weekend. Millions from Nebraska to Texas and east to Louisiana are also under cold weather alerts, where low temperatures below freezing are forecast for some areas. By Tuesday, temperature drops of as much as 30 degrees below normal are possible for the eastern two-thirds of the US.
Members of Congress will meet on Capitol Hill today amid winter storm alerts to officially certify the election of President-elect Donald Trump. The ceremonial process will clear the way for Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president in two weeks on January 20. Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over the counting of electoral votes for each state and will have to formally certify her own loss — and Trump’s victory. Today’s certification marks the four-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, riot in which Trump’s supporters swarmed and vandalized the US Capitol. Trump has floated the possibility of pardons for some people found guilty in the riot.
Authorities have revealed chilling details about the timeline of events leading up to the New Year’s terror attack in New Orleans, which may have been years in the making. The 42-year-old attacker visited the city twice in the months before the holiday and used Meta Glasses to film Bourbon Street and plan out his attack, FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil said Sunday. The mass killing has raised questions as to how the city secured the French Quarter and how a heavy-duty truck was able to drive onto one of the most pedestrian-heavy roads in the US, killing 14 and injuring at least 35 others. In the coming hours, President Joe Biden is expected to attend a vigil in New Orleans and deliver remarks honoring the victims.
Ukraine has launched a counterattack in the southern Russian border region of Kursk, warning that Russia is “getting what it deserves.” The Ukrainian military first launched an incursion into Kursk in August and has held much of the territory it took, despite efforts by Russian and recently deployed North Korean troops to drive Ukrainian units back across the border. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today that Russia may be close to sharing advanced satellite technology with North Korea after the isolated nation supplied thousands of troops to help bolster Moscow’s invasion.
The 82nd Golden Globe Awards, which honor some of the best of film and TV, were presented on Sunday. “The Brutalist” won best drama film and “Emilia Pérez” took home the award for best musical or comedy, setting up both films for a busy award season. “Emilia Pérez” had a particularly strong night with four wins. “Shōgun” had a dominant showing in the TV categories, winning four awards, and the comedy “Hacks” nabbed best series and a Globe for lead Jean Smart. Musical mega-hit “Wicked” also won a recently added category recognizing box office hits, as award shows aim to honor films that get viewers into theaters despite the rise of streaming.
Brazilian nun becomes the world’s oldest person A soccer-loving nun from Brazil is believed to have become the world’s oldest living person at nearly 117!
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Melania Trump headed to the screen with Amazon documentary The famously private incoming first lady will be the subject of a new documentary coming to Amazon’s Prime Video this year.
Here’s what trend forecasters think you’ll be wearing in 2025From the resurrection of skinny jeans to donning pajamas during the day, here’s what experts believe you’ll add to your closet this year.
An NFL shake-up The NFL’s New England Patriots fired head coach Jerod Mayo on Sunday after just one season. The Patriots join the New York Jets and New Orleans Saints as franchises that will be looking for a new head coach.
$9 That’s how much it will cost drivers entering New York City during peak hours now that the city has implemented a new congestion pricing toll. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to kill the program when he takes office, but it’s unclear if he will follow through.
“Ultimately, United will add Starlink to its entire fleet.”
— United Airlines, announcing that its flights will have access to Elon Musk’s Starlink Wi-Fi services as early as this spring. The deal is yet another sign of the billionaire’s widening reach into industries across the US economy.
Check your local forecast here>>>
Inside a non-alcoholic bar Washington, DC, bar owner Vergie Arandid opened Binge, the city’s first fully non-alcoholic bar. In this video, she explains why sober curiosity is no longer just a trend that happens during Dry January.
How will Congress certify Trump's electoral college win?
US lawmakers will gather on Monday for a joint session of Congress to certify Donald Trump's presidential election win - a procedure that happens every four years after the vote and two weeks before the president's inauguration.
Last time, the routine went awry when a group of Trump's supporters rioted at the Capitol to try to stop the formal vote-counting and overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
This year's certification will bring Trump a step closer to returning to the White House, after the Republican won the 2024 contest against Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Because of her role as leader of the Senate, Harris will oversee the certification.
Federal law states that Congress must gather on 6 January to certify the election results.
Members open sealed certificates from America's 50 states, each of which contains a record of that state's electoral votes.
The results are read out loud and an official count is tallied.
The president of the Senate - currently Harris - presides over the joint session of Congress. She will formally declare the winner of the presidential election.
Routine turned to violence on 6 January 2021: the last time a joint session of Congress was held to certify election results.
After Trump made unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him, hundreds of rioters smashed through barricades to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden's win.
Trump urged Mike Pence, who was then vice-president, to have "courage" and allow states to "correct their votes".
After the mob filled - and then emptied - the halls of the US Capitol building, members of Congress returned and certified the election, and Pence rejected Trump's request. Several deaths were blamed on the day's violence.
In the years since, Trump and many of his supporters have maintained his baseless claims about the 2020 election. He has vowed to pardon some of those convicted of offences over the riot when he returns to the presidency.
While there is some lingering anxiety in Washington DC, this year's certification is expected to go off without a hitch, and Harris has not disputed the results.
This will not be the first time that a defeated election candidate has had to oversee the certification process.
In 2021, Pence oversaw the certification of the Biden-Harris victory, and in 2001, then-Vice-President Al Gore oversaw the certification of President George W Bush.
Short answer: yes. But it does not happen very often.
Members of Congress are allowed to object after a state's certificate is read out. But in order for the presiding officer to hear the objection, it needs to be in writing and signed by one-fifth of the members of the House (the lower chamber) and one-fifth of the Senate (the upper chamber). Previously, an objection only needed to be raised by one member from each chamber.
The new policy came about in 2022, in an attempt to make objections more difficult. If an objection does meet the new requirements, the joint session would be suspended for the House and Senate to consider the objection separately. Both chambers would have to reach a majority vote for the objection to be sustained.
Challenges to electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania were rejected by both the House and the Senate in 2021.
Once the certification is complete, there is only one step left in the process before Trump is officially president again: the inauguration.
On 20 January, the Trump family, former presidents and members of the public will gather on the west front of the Capitol for the official swearing in of the 47th president.
Congress is ready to certify Trump’s election win, but his Jan. 6 legacy hangs over the day
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
“Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican who helped lead Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said Sunday on Fox News Channel.
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 it is 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 has demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.
Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, called Jan. 6, 2021, “one of the toughest days in American history.”
“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, will come together to affirm the choice of Americans.
With pomp and tradition, the day is expected to unfold as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with the electoral certificates from the states — boxes that staff were frantically grabbing and protecting as Trump’s mob stormed the building last time.
Senators will walk across the Capitol — which four years ago had filled with roaming rioters, some defecating and menacingly calling out for leaders, others engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police — to the House to begin certifying the vote.
Harris will preside over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certify her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
She will stand at the dais where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly rushed to safety last time as the mob closed in and lawmakers fumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and shots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter trying to climb through a broken glass door toward the chamber.
There are new procedural rules in place in the aftermath of what happened four years ago, when Republicans parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent challenged the results their own states had certified.
Under changes to the Electoral Count Act, it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, to raise any objections to election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement is on high alert for intruders. No tourists will be allowed.
But none of that is expected to be necessary.
Republicans, who met with Trump behind closed doors at the White House before Jan. 6, 2021, to craft a complex plan to challenge his election defeat, have accepted his win this time.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House floor challenge in 2021, said people at the time were so astonished by the election’s outcome and there were “lots of claims and allegations.”
This time, he said, “I think the win was so decisive.... It stifled most of that.”
Democrats, who have raised symbolic objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to George W. Bush and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, have no intention of objecting. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said the Democratic Party is not “infested” with election denialism.
“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said on the first day of the new Congress, to applause from Democrats in the chamber.
“You see, one should love America when you win and when you lose. That’s the patriotic thing to do,” Jeffries said.
Last time, far-right militias helped lead the mob to break into the Capitol in a war-zone-like scene. Officers have described being crushed and pepper-sprayed and beaten with Trump flag poles, “slipping in other people’s blood.”
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home confinement or other penalties.
Those Republicans who engineered the legal challenges to Trump’s defeat still stand by their actions, celebrated in Trump circles, despite the grave costs to their personal and professional livelihoods.
Several including disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman and indicted-but-pardoned Michael Flynn met over the weekend at Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago estate for a film screening about the 2020 election.
Trump was impeached by the House on the charge of inciting an insurrection that day but was acquitted by the Senate. At the time, GOP leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege but said his culpability was for the courts to decide.
Federal prosecutors subsequently issued a four-count indictment of Trump for working to overturn the election, including for conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to pare back the case once the Supreme Court ruled that a president has broad immunity for actions taken in office.
Smith last month withdrew the case after Trump won reelection, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Biden, in one of his outgoing acts, awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who had been the chair and vice chair of the congressional committee that conducted an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has said those who worked on the Jan. 6 committee should be locked up.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
Winter storm will not delay Trump election certification in Congress, House leader says
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - A massive winter storm moving across the United States will not keep the U.S. Congress from meeting on Monday to formally certify Republican Donald Trump's election as president, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday.
"The Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6 at 1 p.m. - so, whether we’re in a blizzard or not we’re going to be in that chamber making sure this is done," Johnson told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" in an interview.
Johnson said he hoped there would be full attendance despite the storm and that he had encouraged lawmakers to stay in the city.
Forecasts called for heavy snow and high winds from the Central Plains to the mid-Atlantic states, the National Weather Service said. Severe weather advisories were issued across the eastern half of the country, including blizzard warnings in parts of Kansas.
In Washington, mixed snow and sleet accumulations were expected to be between three and seven inches (7 to 18 cm), promising a difficult commute and possible closings of schools, government and businesses.
Bad winter weather can wreak havoc in the Washington metropolitan area, which has seen mild winters in recent decades and has at times been unprepared for accumulations of snow or ice. The city ordered public schools closed on Monday and school cancellations were also announced in several suburban Virginia counties. School systems in neighboring Maryland were likely to follow suit.
Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives returned to Washington on Friday after the winter break and Republicans gathered on Saturday with Johnson to discuss legislative priorities. Republicans won control of both the chambers in November's election.
Other leaders stressed they were not contemplating a weather delay.
"No change to the schedule," said Lauren Fine, communications director for Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
The certification process, usually a formality, was upended four years ago when supporters of Trump violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the 2020 election.
Trump has continued to falsely claim his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Biden and the Democrats say they will honor the 2024 election results and proceed with certification.
Four years after his supporters invaded the US Capitol, Trump is more powerful than ever
Late on a day of chaos and blood on January 6, 2021, it was unimaginable that Donald Trump — who summoned a mob to Washington and told the crowd to “fight like hell” — would get anywhere near the presidency again.
Yet on Monday, exactly four years after his supporters invaded the US Capitol, beat up police officers and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Congress will convene to again confirm another election.
The democracy that Trump tried to desecrate will enshrine his return to power.
A joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes from his November victory will rekindle chilling memories of the horror and fear felt by anyone who was in the US Capitol four years ago.
The ceremonial process that will clear the way for Trump’s swearing in as the 47th president in two weeks will also highlight an extraordinary moment in political history in a nation where Trump is more powerful and popular than he’s ever been. A plurality of voters decided that despite his egregious conduct four years ago, he was the best option to lead the country until January 2029.
January 6, 2025, will mark the most stunning political comeback in US history, and will usher in a new administration that could feature the president-elect’s most extreme stress test of the Constitution so far.
It will also underscore the Democratic Party’s failures in convincing voters that Trump represents a mortal threat to the country’s democracy and that they had the answers to Americans’ economic struggles and concerns over immigration.
Americans made a choice in November, and even though he conjured a day of infamy four years ago, they picked Trump.
The congressional certification of Trump’s victory — over which his vanquished opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, will preside — will reward an extraordinary effort by the ex-president, his supporters and the conservative media machine to whitewash what happened on one of the darkest days in US history.
Trump, with a storm of misinformation, has convinced millions of Americans of his lie about the 2020 election being stolen. Republicans have rebranded the January 6 rioters as “tourists,” persecuted victims and heroes, despite the hundreds of convictions handed down by courts. Trump has promised to pardon those found guilty over the attack. He launched his 2024 campaign with a recording of the National Anthem by the “J6 choir,” sung by prisoners jailed for their role in the riot. And he rebranded January 6, 2021, a “beautiful day” and a “day of love.”
This could hardly be more misleading. The truth of January 6 was told in shocking details by witnesses and law enforcement officers to a congressional select committee when the House was still under Democratic control. “It was carnage. It was chaos,” said Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer whose testimony was interspersed with footage of her being knocked unconscious by Trump’s supporters and who described slipping on the spilled blood of her colleagues. “I am not combat trained, and on that day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat,” Edwards said in June 2022.
While this was unfolding, senators and representatives were running for their lives, Trump’s supporters breached the Senate chamber and Secret Service agents hustled then-Vice President Mike Pence to safety as the crowd chanted for him to be hanged.
But by shrugging off his second impeachment over January 6, 2021, reestablishing his dominance over the GOP and winning a subsequent election despite multiple criminal indictments, Trump avoided paying a meaningful political price for his assault on democracy. When he won a nonconsecutive second term, he went from being a political aberration to one of the most significant figures in American history. Along the way, he skillfully portrayed attempts to bring him to justice for his transgressions as persecution, creating a political rallying effect. He’ll return to the White House as an even more powerful leader, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling arising from one of his legal cases that gives the president substantial criminal immunity for official acts committed while in office.
Most profoundly, Trump will send a message down through the ages that a president who refuses to accept the result of a free and fair election and who incites an attack on the Capitol can get away with it — and regain power.
Yet, the process of certifying Trump’s election win will also be a reaffirmation of democracy. And Biden and Harris, in one of their final acts in office, are restoring a tradition of smooth handoffs between administrations denied to them by Trump.
Biden said Sunday this had been deliberate.
“If you notice, I’ve reached out to, to make sure the smooth transition. We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” the president told reporters at the White House.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Sunday evening, he also warned of the dangers of forgetting what happened four years ago.
“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand,” Biden wrote without naming Trump.
“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed,” he continued, adding that he has invited his successor to the White House on the morning of January 20 and that he will be attending Trump’s inauguration.
Unlike in 2020, the losers — this time, the Democrats — have not lied about election fraud, drawn up alternative slates of electors or called for a crowd to come to Washington to protest false claims of a stolen election.
“He led an insurrection, but the people have now voted and our job tomorrow, which is also January 6, is to implement the will of the people,” Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It’s the peaceful transition of power. So, Democrats and Republicans will come together tomorrow to certify those results … that’s what we do. That’s what America has done, and that’s what we will do on the Inauguration Day.”
The electoral certification of Trump’s win will be a bitter moment for Democrats. And it will highlight the party’s painful reality that it couldn’t produce a candidate in 2024 to beat a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, once-convicted ex-president who tried to burn down democracy to stay in power.
If the core purpose of Biden’s 2020 campaign was to purge Trump from American political life, then his presidency was a failure, whatever other achievements burnish his legacy. Biden’s decision to run for reelection, which came disastrously unstuck in a CNN debate that laid bare the brutal reality of his diminished capacity, helped set Democrats up for failure. And Harris’ inability to coin a convincing case for how she’d help Americans at a time of high prices and economic insecurity opened the door to Trump’s return to the Oval Office. She never sufficiently distanced herself from the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border or its insistence that an inflationary crisis was merely “transitory.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that voters hadn’t ignored what happened on January 6, 2021, but had made a judgment on what was most important to them. “I wouldn’t say that the American people disregarded this. They just had a different view as to what was in their interest, economically and the rest,” the California Democrat said.
Trump, with his searing anti-immigration rhetoric, succeeded in painting his chaotic presidency as a kind of lost golden age, despite the scenes of violence and lawlessness that he conjured at its end
The country indisputably took a step to the right in the 2024 election, toward Trump’s populist nationalism, even in many blue-leaning districts and cities. Trump won all seven swing states and became the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote, even if he fell marginally below a majority of votes cast. His claims of a historic mandate are exaggerated, but that’s unlikely to thwart his promise to use power to mount a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, wreak revenge on his political enemies and attempt a crackdown on the media. Republicans now control both the House and the Senate and will have the backstop of an often-supportive Supreme Court majority.
Trump’s triumph has left Democrats adrift, seeking a new message and wondering how they can connect with working Americans again. And the party is facing the reality that a plurality of voters preferred a former president who tried to destroy democracy to stay in power to their candidate. Sufficient voters seemed to decide that they’d prefer a strongman who better voiced their grievances than an alternative who warned that Trump was a threat to democracy.
With their warnings about Trump’s threat to constitutional values, Democrats found themselves in the position of defending a government and an establishment in which many Americans had lost faith, after years of foreign wars and the hollowing out of the blue-collar industrial economy.
This sense of the end of an ancient regime was reflected Saturday when Biden made the latest of his postelection jabs at Trump. He awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to recipients whom many Democrats see as embodying the democratic order that Trump repudiates. They included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016. Biden also posthumously recognized assassinated former Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, whose vaccine-skeptic son split with Democrats and his family and is Trump’s controversial choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department. He also awarded the medal to former Michigan Gov. George Romney, a Republican and the late father of former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trump’s last and most prominent critics in the GOP.
After the ceremony, Biden implied that despite Trump’s imminent arrival in the White House, the fight to save democracy would go on. “Let’s remember, our sacred effort continues, and to keep going, as my mother would say, we have to keep the faith,” he said.
The party that once prided itself on defending global democracy has, however, long since moved on, profiting from its denial of the events of January 6, 2021, which has helped Republicans vault back to power.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, keeping the gavel in a razor-thin victory on Friday, is already laying the groundwork to implement Trump’s ambitious agenda of strict immigration enforcement, tax cuts and slashes to the size of the federal government despite his tiny House majority.
Johnson has also changed his mind on the urgency of upholding the certification of electoral votes.
Four years ago, he was a key player in Trump’s attempts to subvert the result of a democratic election. Even after the bloody riot, the Louisiana Republican voted against the awarding of electoral votes to Biden in Pennsylvania and Arizona based on false claims of election fraud.
Now, however, he says nothing must get in the way of enshrining Trump’s win.
“We got a big snow storm coming to DC, and we encourage all of our colleagues, do not leave town, stay here, because, as you know, the Electoral Count Act requires this on January 6, at 1 p.m. so whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to making sure this is done,” he told Fox News on Sunday.
“We cannot delay that certification.”
US Congress to meet to certify Trump's election, four years after Capitol riot
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is set to meet in snow-covered Washington on Monday to formally certify Donald Trump's election as president, four years after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block the certification of his 2020 loss.
Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud, and had warned throughout his 2024 campaign that he harbored similar concerns until his Nov. 5 defeat of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The joint session of Congress is set to go forward even as a winter storm bears down on the nation's capital, threatening to drop about 6 inches (15 cm) of snow and snarl travel.
Unofficial results show Trump winning 312 electoral college votes to Harris's 226. Republicans also captured a majority in the U.S. Senate and held a narrow edge in the House of Representatives, which will give Trump leeway in implementing his planned agenda of tax cuts and a crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally when he is sworn in on Jan. 20.
Democrats are not expected to try to block certification of Trump's victory on Monday.
"We must renew our commitment to safeguarding American democracy," No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark said in a statement. "As elected leaders, our loyalty must be to the Constitution, first and always. We are here to honor the will of the people and the rule of law."
Trump has also said he plans to pardon some of the more than 1,500 people charged with taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, when a mob fought with police, smashing its way in through windows and doors and chanting "Hang Mike Pence," referring to Trump's then-vice president, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden's victory.
In the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the Capitol, rioters surged past police barricades, assaulting about 140 officers and causing more than $2.8 million in damage. Multiple police officers who battled protesters died in the weeks that followed, some by suicide.
As a result of that day's violence, Congress passed legislation late in 2022 bolstering guardrails to ensure that the certification process is administered in a legal manner.
Many of these changes were directly in response to Trump's actions leading up to and including Jan. 6, 2021.
For example, the new law makes clear that the vice president's role is largely ceremonial.
Any objections to a state's results must now be submitted by at least one-fifth of the members of the House and the Senate before triggering debates over the objections. The House has 435 members and the Senate has 100.
Previously, it had required just one member from each chamber to object to a state's certification.
Meanwhile, the law specifies that the choice of electors must occur according to state laws enacted prior to Election Day, with governors of the states submitting lists of electors. Trump and his surrogates in 2021 had attempted to recruit alternate electors sympathetic to his cause.
A large security fence has been erected around the Capitol complex ahead of Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
How Congress will certify Trump’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6
WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressional joint session to count electoral votes on Monday is expected to be much less eventful than the certification four years ago that was interrupted by a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump who tried to stop the count and overturn the results of an election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
This time, Trump is returning to office after winning the 2024 election that began with Biden as his party’s nominee and ended with Vice President Kamala Harris atop the ticket. She will preside over the certification of her own loss, fulfilling the constitutional role in the same way that Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did after the violence subsided on Jan. 6, 2021.
Usually a routine affair, the congressional joint session on Jan. 6 every four years is the final step in reaffirming a presidential election after the Electoral College officially elects the winner in December. The meeting is required by the Constitution and includes several distinct steps.
A look at the joint session:
Under federal law, Congress must meet Jan. 6 to open sealed certificates from each state that contain a record of their electoral votes. The votes are brought into the chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion.
Bipartisan representatives of both chambers read the results out loud and do an official count. The vice president, as president of the Senate, presides over the session and declares the winner.
The Constitution requires Congress to meet and count the electoral votes. If there is a tie, then the House decides the presidency, with each congressional delegation having one vote. That hasn’t happened since the 1800s, and won’t happen this time because Trump’s electoral win over Harris was decisive, 312-226.
Congress tightened the rules for the certification after the violence of 2021 and Trump’s attempts to usurp the process.
In particular, the revised Electoral Count Act passed in 2022 more explicitly defines the role of the vice president after Trump aggressivelypushed Pence to try and object to the Republican’s defeat — an action that would have gone far beyond Pence’s ceremonial role. Pence rebuffed Trump and ultimately gaveled down his own defeat. Harris will do the same.
The updated law clarifies that the vice president does not have the power to determine the results on Jan. 6.
Harris and Pence were not the first vice presidents to be put in the uncomfortable position of presiding over their own defeats. In 2001, Vice President Al Gore presided over the counting of the 2000 presidential election that he narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Gore had to gavel several Democrats’ objections out of order.
In 2017, Biden as vice president presided over the count that declared Trump the winner. Biden also shot down objections from House Democrats that did not have any Senate support.
The presiding officer opens and presents the certificates of the electoral votes in alphabetical order of the states.
The appointed “tellers” from the House and Senate, members of both parties, then read each certificate out loud and record and count the votes. At the end, the presiding officer announces who has won the majority votes for both president and vice president.
After a teller reads the certificate from any state, a lawmaker can stand up and object to that state’s vote on any grounds. But the presiding officer will not hear the objection unless it is in writing and signed by one-fifth of each chamber.
That threshold is significantly higher than what came before. Previously, a successful objection only required support from one member of the Senate and one member of the House. Lawmakers raised the threshold in the 2022 law to make objections more difficult.
If any objection reaches the threshold — something not expected this time — the joint session suspends and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must uphold it by a simple majority vote. If they do not agree, the original electoral votes are counted with no changes.
In 2021, both the House and Senate rejected challenges to the electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Before 2021, the last time that such an objection was considered had been 2005, when Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, objected to Ohio’s electoral votes, claiming there were voting irregularities. Both the House and Senate debated the objection and easily rejected it. It was only the second time such a vote had occurred.
After Congress certifies the vote, the president is inaugurated on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 20.
The joint session is the last official chance for objections, beyond any challenges in court. Harris has conceded and never disputed Trump’s win.
Capitol heavily secured for election certification as Trump's Jan. 6 pardon plans remain largely a mystery
WASHINGTON — Four years after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, members of Congress will be under heavy security Monday as they certify Trump's 2024 election victory, ensuring the first president to face federal felony criminal charges will return to the White House in two weeks.
On Jan. 20, Trump will walk through the Lower West Tunnel — the location of some of the worst violence of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — to take the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States. Trump, who himself faced four felony charges in connection with Jan. 6 and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, has vowed to pardon some untold number of Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office.
But details of Trump's plans are uncertain even as the final days of President Joe Biden's term tick away.
More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and about 1,270 have been convicted in a sprawling investigation that has resulted in more than 660 prison sentences, according to statistics released Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Prison sentences have ranged from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison, a sentence imposed on former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Hundreds more Jan. 6 defendants have been sentenced to probation, most of whom were convicted of low-level offenses like unlawful parading.
In September, the federal government declared the Electoral College certification a National Special Security Event, heightening the level of security at the Capitol. Though there are no major Democratic protests planned for Monday, the government put severe security measures in place ahead of this week that will remain as law enforcement agencies deal with other upcoming events, including Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
On Saturday morning, about 36 hours before a snowstorm was expected to hit Washington, workers at the Capitol were placing additional layers of high fencing around the Capitol grounds, including on the west front, which Trump supporters took over during the Capitol attack four years ago.
Trump, like many of his fellow Republicans, underwent a massive shift in his rhetoric since the Jan. 6 attack, from calling the Capitol breach a "heinous attack" in 2021 to describing it as a "day of love" last year. The effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 has been aided by numerous conspiracy theories that Trump allies on Capitol Hill have propagated.
The president-elect said that Jan. 6 defendants were subject to “a very nasty system” and that he would be “acting very quickly” on Jan. 6 pardons.
Trump has said there “may be some exceptions” to his Jan. 6 pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy,” but he did not rule out pardoning people who had admitted assaulting police officers. The Trump transition team has said pardons will be issued “case by case,” but Trump has said the “vast majority” of Jan. 6 defendants should not be in jail.
The U.S. attorney's office said that just eight pretrial defendants remain in jail in Washington, while all the other incarcerated Jan. 6 defendants are serving the sentences imposed after their convictions.
While more misdemeanor cases against low-level Jan. 6 defendants seem unlikely in a Trump administration, it is not yet clear how pending cases against people accused of assaulting law enforcement officers will be handled.
Online “sedition hunters” who have already aided the FBI in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases say more than 200 people suspected of committing assaults on law enforcement officers or members of the media have been identified but have not yet been arrested. Among them are more than 60 people whose images are featured on the FBI website that lists them as wanted for assault.
Biden implored lawmakers Sunday to speak truthfully about the Capitol attack, in which more than 140 police officers were injured and after which some law enforcement officers died, at an event with newly elected Democratic lawmakers.
“Now, it’s your duty to tell the truth, to remember what happened and not let Jan. 6th be rewritten,” Biden said. “It’s one of the toughest days in American history.”
Trump's election certification set to begin on anniversary of 2021 Capitol riot
Congress will convene Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, four years to the day after Trump's supporters rioted inside the U.S. Capitol to protest his defeat in the 2020 election.
While Trump falsely denied his loss to President Joe Biden and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, Monday's joint session to confirm Trump's return to power is expected to avoid repeating any similar violence or chaos.
Harris, who will preside over the proceedings, has not challenged the election outcome or spread false conspiracy theories to undermine confidence in the results, as Trump did.
Nor have Harris and her allies pursued a flurry of legal actions to try to overturn the election outcome, as Trump and his allies did.
Democrats are also not expected to raise objections to the electoral results during the certification proceedings themselves, as some Republican senators and a majority of GOP House members did in 2021.
Harris, in a recorded video obtained first by NBC News, said her role is a "sacred obligation" and that she is "guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people."
But while the process may be reverting to its traditionally ceremonial role in the peaceful transition of power, the scars left from 2021 can still be seen.
The Capitol complex will be under heavy security as lawmakers meet to certify the election. The Homeland Security Department in September designated Jan. 6, 2025, a "National Special Security Event" for the first time, prompting law enforcement at all levels to enact a comprehensive security plan around the Capitol.
The certification events will also take place while hundreds of people are in jail for their involvement in the 2021 riot. The Justice Department's efforts to investigate and prosecute rioters — the largest such probe in U.S. history — have yielded charges against more than 1,580 defendants and convictions for about 1,270 of them.
Trump, who was impeached for a second time for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, has vowed to pardon its participants — possibly including those who assaulted police officers, though he said there "may be some exceptions."
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday morning that DOJ prosecutors "have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity."
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Congress counts electoral votes today. What to know as lawmakers finalize the 2024 presidential election results.
Washington — The House and Senate are convening Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election.
It comes four years after a violent mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol to prevent Congress from affirming President Biden's win. There appear to be no plans by Democrats to stand in the way of certifying Trump's win.
Here's what to expect this time.
Senators and members of the House will meet in a joint session at 1 p.m. to tally the electoral votes from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Vice President Kamala Harris will preside in her role as president of the Senate.
The vice president will read aloud the electoral votes, and then Congress counts each state's results to affirm Trump's victory. Trump won 312 Electoral College votes, far surpassing the 270 needed for victory. Harris won 226 votes.
The process is typically a ceremonial step before a president is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Congress is required by law to count the electoral votes on Jan. 6 after each presidential election. However, the date has been temporarily changed by law when Jan. 6 fell on a weekend. In 2013, Congress affirmed that President Barack Obama won the election on Jan. 4, rather than on Jan. 6, which was a Sunday.
After the Capitol riot in 2021, Congress moved to reform the Electoral Count Act — an 1887 law that governed the counting of electoral votes — to prevent another effort to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act in 2022, which clarified that the vice president's role in presiding over the joint session of Congress is ceremonial. It also made it more difficult for members of Congress to challenge a state's electors by raising the threshold to 20% of members of each chamber. Previously, just one member of the House and one senator were needed to raise an objection.
Following Trump's defeat in the 2020 election, he and his allies fueled unfounded allegations of fraud and argued that Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to accept or reject electoral votes. Pence denied he had such authority.
As Congress was tallying the votes in 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, joined Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, to object to Mr. Biden's votes from Arizona.
The joint session was then suspended and the House and Senate separately debated the objection. The process was abruptly interrupted as a violent mob of protesters made their way into the building after Trump urged them to march to the Capitol.
Hours later, after rioters were cleared from the building, both chambers voted to reject the objection that would have thrown out Arizona's electoral votes for Mr. Biden. The House and Senate then reconvened in a joint session to continue the count. They later were forced to split and debate another objection to Pennsylvania's results, which was brought by Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Both chambers also rejected the attempt to throw out the state's votes for Mr. Biden.
This time, it will be nothing more than a complaint. In the last presidential election, a member from each chamber needed to object to the count to force lawmakers to debate and vote on whether to accept or reject a state's results. The Electoral Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2022, raised the threshold to one-fifth of members in each chamber.
A new Donald Trump era: Congress to certify election victory four years after Jan. 6 riot
WASHINGTON – No one expects an angry mob to show up this time.
Four years to the day that supporters of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the certification of the 2020 election, Congress will usher in a new Trump era on Monday when it gathers to count each state’s electoral votes and officially declare him the winner of last year’s presidential contest.
This time, the proceeding is expected to go off smoothly. No rioters storming the Capitol. No one pushing past police barricades and beating officers with makeshift weapons. No lawmakers running through the Capitol’s corridors in fear of their lives. No sitting president pressuring a vice president to thwart the process.
“I think it will almost be a nonevent,” predicted Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
The difference between then and now is Trump.
Four years ago, the Republican refused to acknowledge he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, claiming the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress was to certify the results of that election, Trump held a rally on the Ellipse with the White House in the background and urged thousands of his supporters to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” They did, setting in motion the most violent attack against the seat of government since the War of 1812.
But Trump eagerly embraced the results of last year’s election after he won both the popular vote and the Electoral College over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Though Trump had again warned of the possibility of election fraud, he went suddenly silent about those dire predictions after his victory.
Heightened security:Security measures pick up around DC ahead of Jan. 6, Carter funeral, Trump Inauguration Day
Congressional Democrats are not expected to challenge the election results when they gather to certify them on Monday.
“I think it’s safe to say that even the Democrats heard from the American people that this is what they wanted,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.
Even so, hanging over the certification process will be unsettling memories of the assault on the Capitol, uncertainty over whether Trump will follow through on his promise to pardon those involved and questions of how the Jan. 6, 2021 attack will be viewed through the broader lens of history.
“For a significant chunk of the population, including me, it will be remembered as a frightening attempt to use force to overrule the results of a presidential election,” said Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard professor who taught a class on the Jan. 6 attacks.
For a different segment of the population, “it may be remembered as a day of courage and heroism,” Keyssar said.
Either way, Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term, will immediately earn a couple of places in the history books when he begins his second term on Jan. 20. He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to leave office in defeat and return four years later. He also will become the first president to enter office with a criminal record after his conviction in New York last May on 34 felonies involving hush-money payments to a porn star.
Trump was indicted on federal charges tied to his mishandling of classified documents after he left office and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the attack on the Capitol. But three weeks after last year’s election, a judge acting on the request of special counsel Jack Smith dismissed the charges that Trump tried to steal the election in 2020. Smith also effectively ended the classified documents case by dropping his appeal of a separate judge’s dismissal of those charges.
Federal prosecutors did win the conviction of more than 1,000 people who were involved in the Jan. 6 attack. At least 645 were jailed and another 145 were serving home detention as of Dec. 6, according to the Justice Department.
Trump has vowed repeatedly for years to pardon defendants charged in the attack, leading some to ask judges to postpone trials, sentencings or incarceration until after he is inaugurated.
Some defendants have asked permission to attend the inauguration while awaiting trial.
Tommy Tatum of Mississippi, who was charged with using a flagpole to intimidate police at the Capitol, asked the court to let him travel to Washington on Jan. 6 to attend a news conference and on Jan. 20 to attend the inauguration.
“The Government is punishing Mr. Tatum by preventing him from attending a press conference as a journalist and from expressing his support for President Trump by attending his inauguration, clearly in violation of Mr. Tatum’s First Amendment rights,” Tatum’s lawyers wrote in their request.
“There is no legitimate government objective to prevent Mr. Tatum from visiting D.C.,” the lawyers argued.
U.S. District Judge John Bates of the District of Columbia denied Tatum’s request, saying his alleged conduct on Jan. 6 was “particularly violent.”
The travel restriction is necessary to ensure community safety, Bates wrote.
Trump hasn’t spelled out what he will do. He voiced sympathy during the campaign for nonviolent offenders and decried long sentences. But he hasn’t detailed how he would weigh pardons for nearly 1,600 people charged and 1,000 people convicted in the riot, which has left his allies and critics waiting to see what he will do on his first day in office.
“The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime, and I will sign their pardons on Day One,” he told a Wisconsin rally in September.
For Trump, pardoning the defendants would amount to the concluding chapter of the Jan. 6 saga, said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University and the author of a book on Trump’s first term as president.
“He survived all the prosecutions, and he survived the electoral threat that that posed to his future and to the MAGA future,” Zelizer said. “Then he won reelection, and he won it with the popular vote and with all the swing states. A pardon is the final step, saying, ‘You’re free.’”
Congressional Democrats warn pardoning those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection would send the wrong message.
“The pardon power should be used to correct procedural or substantive injustices,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and a former professor of constitutional law.
“No one has identified any injustice in the prosecution of people who violently assaulted police officers, who were engaged in seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States,” Raskin said. “I would view the promise of pardoning hundreds of convicted insurrectionists as a continuation of the assault on American constitutional democracy.”
Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., said granting a pardon to the Jan. 6 defendants, particularly those who committed acts of violence, would send a signal that “violent law-breaking will be allowed as long as it is done under a MAGA banner.”
“That would open the floodgates to chaos all across the country because there will be a whole lot of people out there, including deranged and violent individuals, who think that Donald Trump will give them a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” Magaziner said.
Magaziner said he recognizes the vast majority of Trump supporters are peaceful, patriotic Americans, “but we're not talking about peaceful patriotic Americans when we talk about the Jan. 6 rioters. We’re talking about criminals and many of whom committed acts of violence.”
For some lawmakers, Trump’s threats to investigate, prosecute and imprison his perceived enemies are another cause for alarm. During a December interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said members of a congressional committee that spent 18 months investigating his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection should go to jail.
That’s not how government works, Raskin said.
“The whole point of the American Constitution is we have no kings here,” Raskin said. “We have no monarchs. We have no queens, no emperors. We don't put people in jail because the president doesn't like them.”
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Trump’s return to power will likely result in a revisionist history in terms of how Jan. 6 is remembered among a segment of the American electorate, Keyssar said. In Trump’s view and that of many of his supporters, he said, Trump's victory in November validated many of his grievances about the 2020 election.
“There's a large segment of the American population which equates democracy as the protection of the rights and powers for some people but not others – and, thus, it was legitimate to have this attack on the (election) procedures because the procedures were leading to the wrong outcome,” Keyssar said.
In many ways, Keyssar said, it’s reminiscent of how regional differences shaped Americans’ understanding of the Civil War for more than a century and, in some cases, even today.
“In the South,” he said, “they continue to call it the war of northern aggression.”
5 things to know for Jan. 6: Severe weather, Presidential transition, New Orleans attack, Ukraine, Golden Globes
Today is the last day for the public to pay their respects in Atlanta to former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away at the age of 100 last week. His casket will then be flown to Washington, DC, where he will lie in state at the US Capitol until his official funeral service on Thursday.
Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.
More than 55 million Americans are under winter storm alerts across the US as a powerful weather system sweeps through the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions. Tens of thousands of people in Kansas and Missouri are without power and several stores are running out of essential goods. The severe weather is hammering parts of Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, where snow-covered roads caused numerous accidents over the weekend. Millions from Nebraska to Texas and east to Louisiana are also under cold weather alerts, where low temperatures below freezing are forecast for some areas. By Tuesday, temperature drops of as much as 30 degrees below normal are possible for the eastern two-thirds of the US.
Members of Congress will meet on Capitol Hill today amid winter storm alerts to officially certify the election of President-elect Donald Trump. The ceremonial process will clear the way for Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president in two weeks on January 20. Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over the counting of electoral votes for each state and will have to formally certify her own loss — and Trump’s victory. Today’s certification marks the four-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, riot in which Trump’s supporters swarmed and vandalized the US Capitol. Trump has floated the possibility of pardons for some people found guilty in the riot.
Authorities have revealed chilling details about the timeline of events leading up to the New Year’s terror attack in New Orleans, which may have been years in the making. The 42-year-old attacker visited the city twice in the months before the holiday and used Meta Glasses to film Bourbon Street and plan out his attack, FBI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil said Sunday. The mass killing has raised questions as to how the city secured the French Quarter and how a heavy-duty truck was able to drive onto one of the most pedestrian-heavy roads in the US, killing 14 and injuring at least 35 others. In the coming hours, President Joe Biden is expected to attend a vigil in New Orleans and deliver remarks honoring the victims.
Ukraine has launched a counterattack in the southern Russian border region of Kursk, warning that Russia is “getting what it deserves.” The Ukrainian military first launched an incursion into Kursk in August and has held much of the territory it took, despite efforts by Russian and recently deployed North Korean troops to drive Ukrainian units back across the border. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today that Russia may be close to sharing advanced satellite technology with North Korea after the isolated nation supplied thousands of troops to help bolster Moscow’s invasion.
The 82nd Golden Globe Awards, which honor some of the best of film and TV, were presented on Sunday. “The Brutalist” won best drama film and “Emilia Pérez” took home the award for best musical or comedy, setting up both films for a busy award season. “Emilia Pérez” had a particularly strong night with four wins. “Shōgun” had a dominant showing in the TV categories, winning four awards, and the comedy “Hacks” nabbed best series and a Globe for lead Jean Smart. Musical mega-hit “Wicked” also won a recently added category recognizing box office hits, as award shows aim to honor films that get viewers into theaters despite the rise of streaming.
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Melania Trump headed to the screen with Amazon documentary The famously private incoming first lady will be the subject of a new documentary coming to Amazon’s Prime Video this year.
Here’s what trend forecasters think you’ll be wearing in 2025From the resurrection of skinny jeans to donning pajamas during the day, here’s what experts believe you’ll add to your closet this year.
An NFL shake-up The NFL’s New England Patriots fired head coach Jerod Mayo on Sunday after just one season. The Patriots join the New York Jets and New Orleans Saints as franchises that will be looking for a new head coach.
$9 That’s how much it will cost drivers entering New York City during peak hours now that the city has implemented a new congestion pricing toll. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to kill the program when he takes office, but it’s unclear if he will follow through.
“Ultimately, United will add Starlink to its entire fleet.”
— United Airlines, announcing that its flights will have access to Elon Musk’s Starlink Wi-Fi services as early as this spring. The deal is yet another sign of the billionaire’s widening reach into industries across the US economy.
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Inside a non-alcoholic bar Washington, DC, bar owner Vergie Arandid opened Binge, the city’s first fully non-alcoholic bar. In this video, she explains why sober curiosity is no longer just a trend that happens during Dry January.
