Shortly after three o’clock on Monday afternoon, the veteran Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer stood in a corridor in the Capitol building and gestured towards the windows behind him. He had just paid tribute to the people who had died or been injured during and after the five hours of rioting which took place on January 6th, 2021. (Four police officers serving that day would take their own lives.)
“We are also here because we must never forget,” he told a small gathering of media.
“Right in this area is where the people who sought to intimidate and use violence to overturn our government breached the Capitol walls. And there are lots of people who want to forget, to sweep it under the rug, who want to change the story. We will never forget. We cannot forget. Because democracy is both sacred but at times – rare times but certain times – it can be fragile. We saw the fragility that day.”
Behind Schumer, the vista was one of startling wintry whiteness as Washington was rendered still and silent by the first true snow blast of the new year. From Capitol Hill, you could just about the make out the silhouette of the towering Washington obelisk through the snowy haze. The gathered police, the riot gear, the vans and the double-perimeter security fencing around the Capitol would clearly not be needed. The city was empty. Everybody was at home. The rioters of four years ago, masked and furious that day, were not returning. But they were on the minds of Democratic lawmakers as they gathered to participate in the ritual to register the return of electoral college votes and Donald Trump’s victory.
[ Trump comes full circle as Washington marks anniversary of Capitol riotOpens in new window ]
“It is quiet. Do not take that for granted,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut said shortly before the ceremony. “If Kamala Harris had won this election, this Capitol right now would likely be a bloodbath.”
Monday, then, marked a full circle from the terrible day when a mob the made its way, after an incendiary speech by Donald Trump at the Ellipse, to try to prevent that year’s certification of results to confirm Joe Biden as president. That shocking turn of events – an actual attempted insurrection – was broadcast live around the world. Political representatives from both parties feared for their safety and took refuge in corridors, in offices, for hours. Rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, furious at Trump’s vice-president for certifying the election. A symbolic gallows, with a noose, was erected in front of the Capitol, one of the most sinister images of the day. Some police officers suffered severe injuries in placing themselves in front of the rioters. Nine people died in total.
The significance of the January 6th riots has rumbled through the last four years as one of the motifs of the American political and ideological divide. Trump began the election year of 2024 facing a daunting range of criminal charges relating to his role in stoking that mood of insurrection. But it became clear, as spring turned to summer, that the riots would not be a deciding factor in the election.
So, on the fourth anniversary of January 6th, Trump, the president-elect, watched from Mar-a-Lago as Harris, the Democratic candidate whom he had spoken of with contempt and gross insult throughout their campaign, performed her duty as vice-president by presiding over the certification process and confirming the result.
It cannot have been an easy task for Harris, whose election night disappointment gave way to weeks of internal Democratic acrimony and uncertainty. Harris’s effectiveness as a communicator ran hot and cold during her 100-day campaign. Monday’s challenge brought out the steely poise she exhibited during her presidential debate evisceration of Trump.
The electoral college certification ritual was never designed to feature in the showbiz of US politics. But the events of four years ago meant that this year’s chapter was subject to intense coverage. It has its arcane traditions: the ceremonial walk from the Senate chamber to the House of Representatives; the formal carrying in of the electoral college votes from each state, sealed and contained in mahogany boxes; the reading aloud by the tellers of the state-by-state college vote returns, in alphabetical order. The Republicans applauded each win. The Democrats did the same for theirs – just less often and with less vigour and by the time the process reached the “W” states, many were openly doomscrolling through their phones. When the Ohio result was called, JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, present in his role as senator for the state, rose from his chair and tipped his brow.
Pence, the last Republican vice-president would, over the course of Monday afternoon, take to X to “welcome the return of order and civility to these historic proceedings” and note that it was “particularly admirable that vice-president Harris would preside over the certification of a presidential election that she lost”.
Harris performed with low-key grace and equanimity through the ceremony, standing beside Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and smiling, looking almost happy to be there even as she called out, for once and all, the final electoral college result: Donald J Trump 312. Kamala D Harris 226. That confirmation drew an ovation from both sides of the House and a temporary outbreak of something approaching civility.
But Harris didn’t linger in the House once the ceremony concluded. Good grace has its limits.
By lunchtime, preparations were under way in the Rotunda for the lying in state of the late president Jimmy Carter, whose remains were due to be brought to the Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. Two years ago, on January 5th, 2022, Carter wrote what would be his final opinion piece published in the New York Times. It offered a bleak rebuke of the “unscrupulous politicians” who had guided the violent mob to the Capitol that day and ended with the warning: “Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.”
On the fourth anniversary of the riots, Harris’s decorum helped to restore something of the lost sanctity of the certification ceremony. But demonstrating how to accept election defeat and peacefully conduct the transfer of power was not what the Democrats had in mind for 2025. They have just lost an election which they framed as an existential battle for democracy, with the events of January 6th crucial to their argument.
As time moves on, the attempts to revise and reframe the mythology of that day continue. Trump has several times referred to January 6th as a “day of love” and has promised to free the “hostages”.
The lingering Democratic fear now must be that the events of January 6th will be ultimately whitewashed, much like the cityscape of Washington itself on the fourth anniversary of the riots.
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