WASHINGTON — Snow shovels replaced riot gear on Capitol Hill on Monday and de-icing materials dotted the sidewalks that four years prior were stained by bear and pepper spray, as Congress made Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory official on the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

No Democratic lawmakers rose to challenge any state’s electoral results during the joint session of the Senate and House, meaning the president-elect and Vice President-elect JD Vance are set to be sworn in on Jan. 20. And there were no loud protests from the galleries, which were peppered with many empty seats.

“The whole number of the electors … is 538. Within that whole number, the majority is 270. The totals for president of the United States are as follows: Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida received 312 votes,” Vice President Kamala Harris, in her constitutional role as Senate president, said as the Republican side stood and cheered loudly in a rather awkward scene.

That left the vice president to report on her electoral shortcoming: “Kamala Harris of the state of California received 226 votes.” Democrats, acting in support of one of their own, rose and applauded.

Harris ended by making the outcome official, calling the collective results a “sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States.”

New rules were in place for the joint session to count states’ Electoral College results, making Harris more of an emcee and eliminating any questions about whether a sitting vice president could reject any electoral votes. The change was designed to prevent another president, as Trump did in January 2021, from pressing their No. 2 to halt or slow the constitutionally mandated session.

It also marked one of Harris’ final official acts and capped a roller-coaster six months in which she became the Democratic standard-bearer when President Joe Biden was nudged aside by party bigwigs, only to then lose decisively to Trump — including in the popular vote and all seven battleground states.

Harris had earlier Monday in a social media video described her role overseeing the joint session as “a sacred obligation — one I will uphold guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and unwavering faith in the American people.”

The count sped along, free of objections, though the Texas and Wisconsin GOP delegations were the most vocal when the Trump-Vance tallies were read for their states.

Democrats gave the vice president high marks for her performance Tuesday.

“It’s an emotional moment, I think, for all of us, especially those of us who were so involved in her campaign,” California Rep. Robert Garcia said after Harris dissolved the session. “But I think she handled it with just total poise and class.”

An expected outcome

Lawmakers began the day expecting a much different scene than in 2021, largely because Trump was victorious in November and Democrats did not challenge any election results as he had done after losing in 2020.

“The election was very decisive,” Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., said after the joint session. “There’s really nothing to object to. I mean, the president-elect won not only the popular vote decisively, but he also won the electoral vote decisively.”

California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez said before the vote count that he was “not surprised” that everyday Americans don’t have visceral memories of the Capitol riot of four years ago.

But he added: “I want people to remember what occurred, not necessarily because we’re going to stop Donald Trump from getting certified today or his results certified today, but that can happen again, and the result might not be where the winner, Joe Biden, is actually certified.”

Gomez did not hold back when asked about GOP efforts to downplay Jan. 6 and Trump’s reported plans for pardons for convicted rioters.

“I think it’s foolish. In the short term, it might be good for their politics, but in the long term, it actually hurts our country,” he said.

Another Democrat, Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss, told CNN before the vote count that the day “should be boring,” adding that’s what the founders had in mind.

Newly sworn-in Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, said “everything was different” Monday compared with four years ago, noting this year’s snowstorm and that he was not in the House chamber in 2021 due to precautions taken at the time to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Also a member of the House on Jan. 6 four years ago, newly minted Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey recalled cleaning up debris left in the Capitol Rotunda after Trump supporters had broken into the building.

On Monday, the Democrat said he “spent the morning just kind of walking around the Capitol and just reflecting on what it looked like four years ago.”

“I learned four years ago that the problems that we face as a country are deep to the bone,” he said. “I hope that we can find a place where we can all agree that that’s not behavior that we should see in this … sacred space. But sadly, we don’t have that kind of agreement as a country right now, and that’s what I find still really sad about where the outcome is.”

GOP Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania said he hopes the country is “finally getting past” the 2021 insurrection, calling it a “bad afternoon” for which there was a “lot of blame to go around.”

High security

Despite the piling snow and frigid temperatures outside, there was a noticeably heavy police presence all over the Capitol grounds Monday. A New York Police Department van, with its familiar light-blue lettering, sat idling near Union Station. A few hundred feet away, a Baltimore Police Department convoy cut through the white flakes as it pulled into a perimeter fence, complete with a massive mobile command center and several all-terrain vehicles riding on black trailers.

U.S. Capitol Police officers guarded the fence line and were positioned throughout the complex’s interior, which was vandalized four years ago by a pro-Trump mob that delayed lawmakers’ counting by several hours. Congress did return that night in 2021 to complete its work, however.

“Today showed what is supposed to happen in our democracy, which is the peaceful transfer of power,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., said after the joint session. “But we’re literally surrounded here in this chamber right now by security because of what happened.”

“In the aftermath of the last certification, there were seven people that died, including five officers. And people are still grieving, and our country will never be the same again,” Stansbury said.

Monday’s joint session began when Senate pages carried dark brown wooden boxes with the Electoral College votes into the House chamber. They were followed by Harris and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the new Senate president pro tempore.

As Harris led the Senate procession into the chamber, roughly one-third of the seats were empty. Most filled up before the session got underway. Vance entered near the end of the Senate procession and held court mostly with House GOP members along the chamber’s storied center aisle, including Trump allies Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Tim Burchett of Tennessee. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., entered as the session was already underway, using a walker after a fall that required hip surgery, and letting out a big sigh as she sat.

Trump, who views himself as a master marketer and communicator, has since tried to rebrand Jan. 6, 2021, as a “day of love.” Some Democrats on Monday posted images of a Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6 being squeezed between heavy doors as rioters tried to gain access to the legislative hall.

In contrast, the president-elect, who received 77.3 million votes to Harris’ 75 million, cast a celebratory tone in a Monday morning social media post: “CONGRESS CERTIFIES OUR GREAT ELECTION VICTORY TODAY — A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY. MAGA!”

Biden, in a Washington Post op-ed published Sunday, urged the country to remember what happened four years ago, even with Trump poised to regain power in just two weeks.

“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand,” he wrote.

“This is not what happened,” Biden added. “We cannot allow the truth to be lost.”

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(Mary Ellen McIntire, Michael Macagnone, Ryan Tarinelli, Jacob Fulton, Todd Ruger and Daniela Altimari contributed to this report.)

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