A joint session of Congress is ready to convene Monday to certify President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory within the 2024 election, as soon as a largely ceremonial and uneventful ritual that was disrupted 4 years in the past by a violent mob infected by lies by Mr. Trump on a stolen election.
There isn’t any hint of an identical scene going down this time round. In contrast to Mr. Trump on the time, Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t dispute his defeat in November, and in contrast to Republicans within the aftermath of the 2020 election, Democrats made clear they accepted the outcomes.
Ms. Harris is anticipated to preside over the certification in her capability as Senate president, in a ritual that can underscore the significance of a peaceable transition of energy, even between bitter political rivals.
But in all places there are reminders of the violence that shocked the world on this present day 4 years in the past. The Capitol is closely locked down, with tall black metallic fences surrounding the constructing. Elevated federal, state and native safety sources can be found as lawmakers put together to convene, starting at 1 p.m., for the constitutionally mandated activity of counting and certifying the Electoral Faculty votes.
For the primary time, this present day has been designated by the Division of Homeland Safety as a “particular nationwide safety occasion.”
This will all look like overkill on what needs to be a peaceable and orderly day. However lawmakers and regulation enforcement officers are decided to organize after the violence on January 6, 2021. 4 years in the past, protesters, inspired by Mr. Trump’s false claims that he was the winner of the election, stormed the Capitol with batons and different weapons. , inflicting a riot which led to the death of seven people, including three police officers.
Republicans have tried to neglect the trauma of that day and whitewash historical past. Some Trump loyalists in Congress, like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, have labored for distance himself from his previous statements calling for the perpetrators of this violence to be prosecuted and describing their actions as “un-American”. (Mr. Trump, who promised to pardon these prosecuted for taking part within the riots, has since chosen Ms. Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations.)
Regardless of a regulation handed in 2022 requiring a memorial plaque to be hung itemizing the names of law enforcement officials and different regulation enforcement who responded to the violence that day, no such commemoration hangs on the Capitol right now. .
There’s, nonetheless, a new law in placeenacted in 2022, which overhauled the congressional certification course of to keep away from a repeat of what occurred in 2021. It makes it way more tough for lawmakers to determine whether or not to overturn the state’s electoral votes and clarifies that the vice chairman has no authority to take action. unilaterally, as Mr. Trump unsuccessfully urged his vice chairman, Mike Pence, to do.
Prospects for such a repeat basically evaporated in November, when Mr. Trump gained each the Electoral Faculty and the favored vote.
And Democrats, who for years introduced Mr. Trump as a novel menace to democracy and democratic norms, have constructed their social gathering’s picture on their respect for the Structure, together with their willingness to simply accept election outcomes. unfavorable and transfer on.
“Two months in the past, the American folks elected Donald Trump because the forty seventh president of the USA of America,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and minority chief, mentioned Friday as the brand new Congress convened. gathered, eliciting loud applause from the Republicans. legislators on the bottom.
“It’s good,” he added. “There are not any election deniers on our aspect of the aisle. »
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who served on the choose committee that investigated the Jan. 6 mob assault, pledged that “there will probably be no violence” on Jan. 6.
He added: “There will probably be no try and stage an rebel in opposition to the Structure. It can look way more like what we’ve got seen in the remainder of American historical past. »
Earlier than the 2021 riots, Mr. Trump addressed his supporters on the Ellipse close to the White Home, telling them: “We’re combating like hell. And in the event you don’t battle like hell, you gained’t have a rustic anymore,” encouraging them to march to the Capitol. In the long run, eight Senate Republicans and 139 Home Republicans opposed the certification of election results.
This yr, each Democrats and Republicans are hoping the method goes easily. Home Republicans succeeded Friday in placing apart their divisions and re-elect President Mike Johnson to officepartly as a result of they wished to make sure trouble-free certification of Mr. Trump’s election victory.
And Democrats, from the president on down, have telegraphed that they plan to guide by instance. In November, Mr. Biden prolonged to Mr. Trump a number of the traditions he had been disadvantaged of 4 years earlier, inviting the president-elect to the White Home to acknowledge his victory and telling him that the administration would do “no matter who’s in his energy to ensure you are accommodated, have what you want.
In her concession speech in November, Ms. Harris mentioned she spoke to Mr. Trump and “congratulated him on his victory” and “informed him we’d assist him and his staff with their transition “.
On Monday, Ms. Harris will assume the largely ceremonial function that 4 years in the past put Mr. Pence within the crosshairs of Mr. Trump and the group of his supporters, a few of whom chanted “grasp Mike Pence” as they marched by Parliament. Capitol.
For Ms. Harris, her aides mentioned, presiding over a peaceable transition of energy is among the most essential remaining acts of her time period.
“These certification procedures are usually not only a formality for the vice chairman,” mentioned Brian Fallon, a former senior adviser to Ms. Harris’s marketing campaign. “She considers this the second to sign to the nation that the occasions of 4 years in the past had been an aberration and that our nation’s custom of peaceable switch of energy has been restored.”
