Trump is certified as the 2024 election winner without challenge

Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 election in proceedings that unfolded Monday without violence or mayhem, in stark contrast to the Jan. 6, 2021, violence as his mob of supporters stormed the Capitol, notes AP.

Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over proceedings as the role of the office, read the tally.

The chamber broke into applause, first Republicans for Trump, then Democrats for Harris.

The whole process happened swiftly and without unrest. 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. Within half an hour the process was done.

No violence, protests or even procedural objections in Congress this time. Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden have no qualms this year after he defeated Harris.

And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory nevertheless accept the choice of the American voters. Even the winter snow blanketing the grounds didn’t interfere with Jan. 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.

Trump said in a Monday post 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.

“We should not be lulled into complacency,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the cross-ideological nonprofit Protect Democracy.

He and others have warned that returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to give up the office “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take.”

Instagram photo by Casady Teer.