Congress certifies Trump won the election
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By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK, FARNOUSH AMIRI and MATT BROWN Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in proceedings that unfolded Monday without challenge.
Lawmakers convened under heavy security and a snowstorm to meet the date required by law to certify the election. The whole process happened swiftly and without unrest.
Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over proceedings as the role of her office, read the tally, including of her own defeat.
The chamber broke into applause, first Republicans for Trump’s 312 electoral votes, then Democrats for Harris’ 226.
Within half an hour the process was done.
One by one, the state results were read aloud by the tellers as senators and representatives sat in seats in the House chamber. Vice President-elect JD Vance joined his former colleagues and was surrounded by congratulatory handshakes, hugs and photos afterward.
Trump said online that Congress was certifying a “GREAT” election victory and called it “A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY.”
The day’s return to a U.S. tradition that launches the peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a revived sense of authority.
Biden, speaking Sunday at the White House, said, “We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power.” 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, 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 as 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.
Harris presided over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certified her own defeat -- much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon did in 1961.
She 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.
The House chaplain, Margaret Kibben, who delivered a prayer during the mayhem four years ago, gave a simple request as the chamber opened to “shine your light in the darkness.”
There are new procedural rules in place after 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, the Capitol is at its highest security level possible. No tourists were allowed.