On Monday afternoon, lawmakers convened on snow-covered Capitol Hill to officially certify Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory.
Trump captured the presidency with 312 electoral votes to Harris’s 226 — a total that was confirmed during the certification on Monday, marking the final step in the election process before Trump formally takes back the White House on Jan. 20.
The nation’s capital is bracing for as many as 10 inches of snow, a weather event that threatened lawmakers’ abilities to arrive at the Capitol for Monday’s proceedings.
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Republicans gave a standing ovation in the chamber when Harris announced Trump’s victory was now certified. A bipartisan standing ovation broke out in the House chamber after Harris declared the joint session of Congress dissolved. The event lasted about 30 minutes before Harris gaveled it out.
Kamala Harris is not the first vice president who has to certify their own election loss according to The Hill.
Two vice presidents in recent decades have faced the same predicament — Richard Nixon, who was vice president when he lost to President Kennedy in 1960, and Al Gore when he lost to President George W. Bush in a hard-fought battle in 2000.
Two other vice presidents, Walter Mondale in 1981 and Dan Quayle in 1993, had to preside over the certification of their own defeats for reelection.
Monday also marks four years since rioters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss, ultimately resulting in the death of several police officers.
“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year,” President Biden wrote Monday in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “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.”