This January 6 will not be the same.
Four years ago, the then president Donald Trump he asked his supporters to go to the Capitol to protest Congressional certification of the democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“It’s gonna be wild!” Trump made the promise on Twitter a few weeks earlier January 6, 2021. And was
Trump gave one vitriolic speech to the thousands of people gathered there the ellipse Behind the White House, and a lot after that He headed for the Capitol and the building was attacked in one try to stop the last step used to formalize the winner of the presidential election. Even after the riots broke out, eight Republicans in the Senate and 139 in the House voted against confirming Biden’s victory in some swing states, even though no evidence problems or errors that may affect the result.
This year, the only upset before the quadrennial confirmation of the presidential election came from House Republicans. fighting among themselves who should be on it speaker.
“There will be no violence. There will be no attempt at an unconstitutional rebellion,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. “It’s going to be more like what we’ve seen throughout American history.”
Last time, Trump asked his vice president, Mike Pence, who headed the certification, to intervene to keep him in the White House. This time, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate against Trump, has done it recognize his loss and is not expected to try to change long-standing procedures for securing elections. No other prominent Democrat has called on the party to oppose Trump’s victory.
Congress has also updated the law that regulates the procedure, clarifying the process in the states and specifying that the role of the vice president is purely ministerial.
After the 2020 election, many Republicans said there were signs of massive voter fraud that made it impossible to confirm Biden’s victory, even though never had a clue of widespread fraud. After Trump won in November, many of those Republicans had no such objections, saying they trusted the accuracy of the vote count. It was a change of feeling Republicans share it throughout the country
“As citizens, we should all be happy when things go well,” said Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley. “It is always better not to have much debate in an election, especially when there is no reasonable position to do so.”
However, peace of mind can be an illusion.
Trump and the Republicans declared that if Harris had won ready to face his victory. Vice President JD VanceAs a senator from Ohio, Pence argued that he should act to overturn Biden’s election.
Vance himself will be in position to preside over the next significant January 6th—in 2029, when Congress will accept the electoral votes of the winner of the 2028 presidential election.
“The most dangerous event on January 6 is not January 6, 2025. It’s January 6, 2029, and beyond,” said David Weinberg of Protect Democracy, which advocates against what it calls authoritarian threats to the country. “It creates a huge problem when he loses an election when he’s only standing on one side of the aisle.”
The Constitution outlines some of the basic steps necessary to elect the next president, and congressional legislation has filled in the procedural gaps. After the states choose their winning candidates on Election Day, electors who commit to vote for those candidates gather as the Electoral College and formally cast their ballots for president.
Congress then tallies the votes on January 6 in a joint session presided over by the vice president to formally determine who won the Electoral College majority.
In 2021, Trump pushed Pence not to read accounts of swing states won by Biden, forcing Congress to approve a list of states where he won a majority of the Electoral College. That ploy was called an unconstitutional act by Pence and many lawmakers.
A year later, Biden signed it bipartisan bill which updated the 1887 law governing the joint session to make clear that the vice president must read all state accounts. The Election Counting Reform Act also makes it harder to challenge congressional votes.
However, a lot House Republicans continue against that law.
President of the House Mike JohnsonR-La., was one chief assistant Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 loss and he did not rule out trying to change the outcome of the election if Trump loses in November. Republicans spent the last few weeks of the election hoping that Democrats would do the same if Trump won, and the effort by some to disqualify the former president from the ballot under the Constitution’s dark-era “sedition clause” was rebuffed by the US. Supreme Court
Republicans say it is the size of Trump’s election victory that they are not uneasy. He won the presidency with about 230,000 votes in swing states and 1.5 percentage points of the popular vote in 2020 after losing about 44,000 votes in swing states and 4.5 points nationally.
“This time, I think the victory was so decisive that — for better or worse, depending on which side you’re on — that’s been drowned out,” said Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, the Republican who led the objections in January. 6, 2021, for allegations of voter fraud.
Foley, the author of “Ballot Battles,” a book about electoral challenges in US history, advised Congress on changes to the law governing the joint session and the certification of presidential elections. He said he hoped the 2024 election would put an end to baseless congressional confirmation challenges, even if the candidate who led the last challenge won.
That’s because Trump has said he won’t run again and is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. As Foley noted, in 2022, some Republicans tried to emulate Trump’s mistrust of the election results and lost a lot in swing situations. Denial of the election, he said, may not be feasible if Trump is not attached.
“Since Trump is not going to run again,” Foley said, “I hope this is beyond us.”
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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
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