Congress certifies Trump won the election without challenge — a stark contrast to 2021 violence

WASHINGTON — Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in proceedings Monday that unfolded without challenge, in stark contrast to the Jan. 6, 2021, violence as his mob of supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Lawmakers convened under heavy security and a winter snowstorm to meet the date required by law to certify the election. Layers of tall black fences flanked the 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.

The whole process this time concluded swiftly and without unrest. One by one, a tally of the electoral votes from each state was read aloud to polite applause in the House, no one objected and results were certified.

"Today, America's democracy stood," Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, said after presiding over the session — as is the role of her office — and her own defeat to Trump.

But Trump's legacy from 2021 leaves an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to the White House, his inauguration in two weeks.

While Monday's outcome revived a U.S. tradition that launches the peaceful transfer of presidential power, what's unclear is if Jan. 6, 2021, was the anomaly or if this year's calm becomes the outlier.

Trump denies 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. He calls Jan. 6, 2021, a "day of love."

Trump said online Monday that Congress was certifying a "GREAT" election victory and called it "A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY."

Still, American democracy has proven to be resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, came together to affirm the choice of Americans.

With pomp and tradition, the day unfolded 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 when Trump's mob stormed the building last time.

Senators walked 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.

The House chaplain, Margaret Kibben, who delivered a prayer during the violence four years ago, made a simple request as the chamber opened to "shine your light in the darkness."

Harris stood 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.

And Harris certified her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001, Republican Richard Nixon did in 1961 and then-Vice President Mike Pence did four years ago.

When Harris read the tally, the chamber broke into applause: first Republicans for Trump's 312 electoral votes, then Democrats for Harris' 226.

Vice President-elect JD Vance had joined his former Senate colleagues in the front row, and was surrounded afterward with congratulatory handshakes, hugs and photos.

Within half an hour, the process was done.

There are new procedural rules in place after what happened four years ago, when Republicans echoed Trump's lie that the election was fraudulent and 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.

But none of that was necessary.

Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results now express greater trust in U.S. elections after Trump defeatedHarris.

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."

And Democrats frustrated by Trump's victory nevertheless accepted the choice of the American voters, with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying his side of the aisle is not "infested" with election deniers.

"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.

Harris said afterward that Jan. 6 this time was "about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is one of the most important pillars of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power."

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.

Pence, who had been rushed into hiding that day as rioters threatened to hang him for his refusal to reject Biden's win, wrote online that he welcomed what he called "the return of order and civility" to the certification process.

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, but special counsel Jack Smith withdrew the case last month 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.