US Vice-President Kamala Harris will on Monday preside over the official certification in Congress of the result of November’s presidential election – a contest that she lost to Donald Trump.
The date also marks the fourth anniversary of a riot at the US Capitol, when Trump’s supporters tried to thwart the certification of Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. Normally the occasion is a mere formality.
Heavy security is in place in Washington DC, and Biden has vowed there will be no repeat of the violence on 6 January 2021 – which led to several deaths.
As lawmakers meet in Washington DC, heavy snow forecast for the American capital could prove disruptive.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to go ahead with the certification at 13:00 EST (18:00 GMT) in spite of the weather, telling Fox News: “Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we’re going to be in that chamber making sure this is done.”
As the current vice-president, Harris is required by the US Constitution to officially preside over the certification of the result, after Trump beat her in the nationwide poll on 5 November.
Trump won all seven of the country’s swing states, helping him to victory in the electoral college, the mechanism that decides who takes the presidency. It will be Harris’s job on Monday to read out the number of electoral college votes won by each candidate.
Trump’s second term will begin after he is inaugurated on 20 January. For the first time since 2017, the president’s party will also enjoy majorities in both chambers of Congress, albeit slender ones.
Trump’s win marked a stunning political comeback from his electoral defeat in 2020, and a criminal conviction in 2024 – a first for a current or former US president.
Amid the dramatic recent presidential campaign, Trump also survived a bullet grazing his ear when a gunman opened fire at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.
While away from the White House, he has faced a slew of legal cases against him – including over his attempts to overturn the 2020 result, which he continues to dispute.
Following his defeat that year, Trump and his allies made baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud – claiming the election had been stolen from them.
In a speech in Washington DC on certification day, 6 January 2021, Trump told a crowd to “fight like hell” but also asked them to “peacefully” make their voices heard.
He also attempted to pressurise his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject the election result – a call that Pence rejected.
Rioters went on to smash through barricades and ransack the Capitol building before Trump ultimately intervened by telling them to go home. Several deaths were blamed on the violence.
Trump’s pledges after returning to office include pardoning people convicted of offences over the attack. He says many of them are “wrongfully imprisoned”, though has acknowledged that “a couple of them, probably they got out of control”.
Conversely, Biden has called on Americans never to forget what happened.
“We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.
For Trump’s Republican Party, the new Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signalled a desire to move on, telling the BBC’s US partner CBS News: “You can’t be looking in the rearview mirror.”
By BBC News
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