Congress certifies Trump won the election without challenge
Vice President Kamala Harris shakes hands with House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., after a joint session of Congress confirmed the Electoral College votes, affirming President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK, FARNOUSH AMIRI and MATT BROWN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — 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. But the legacy of Jan. 6, 2021, leaves an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time and is legitimately returning to power.
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. 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.
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.”
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.
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