The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress Certifies Trump's Election Win

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Every four years, Congress meets to certify the results of the previous November's presidential election in what is usually a calm and straightforward event. But, after the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, lawmakers made some changes. We look at what they are, and how things look different today than they did four years ago. Then, as President-elect Trump plans to return to office with Republican majorities in both houses, a look at what Congress' new legislative priorities include. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, and political correspondent Susan Davis.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Happy New Year, NPR Politics! This is Anna and Muffet the Dog. We're out on Snifari in our neighborhood in Indiana. This podcast was recorded at 1.41 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, January 6th of 2025. Things may have changed since the time you hear it, but we're going to have a great start to our 2025. All right, here's the show. I think I learned a new word. I never heard sniffari before. That's pretty funny. I haven't either. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. And today is the anniversary of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, where four years ago,

supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol. They were trying to prevent Congress from certifying the election results that year. Today, a very different scene. It is a snowy, quiet day here in Washington. And as we stepped into tape, they have just certified Trump's return to office. The state of the vote for the president of the United States as delivered to the president

of the Senate is as follows. The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for president of the United States is 538. Within that whole number, the majority is 270. The votes for President of the United States are as follows. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes. Kamala D. Harris. Claudia, you are up there on the hill right now. I'm curious what you have been hearing and seeing. What is the mood like?

Right. Well, coming in from the outside on this snowy day, you would think nothing was happening here. It's quiet except for all of the security apparatus that we didn't see four years ago. There's an inner perimeter of fencing. There's an outer perimeter, a lot of checks coming in. And this place is transformed. In some ways, it's a somber day in terms

of remembering what happened four years ago and the changes in security it triggered. In other ways, you could see members gathering in the House earlier today. It was collegial. And many were excited about this next shift to a Republican controlled Washington. And so in terms of the Electoral Count Reform Act, we also saw changes there

that made this the ceremonial process it's supposed to be. So largely a return to what we saw many years before Jan 6. Was there any acknowledgement of what happened four years ago? It was largely quiet. All of the evidence that we saw in the hours and days, weeks, months after the attack, you were still very, very clear that something terrible had happened on the Hill. But today you can walk through, you don't see evidence of that other than this incredible level of security that we're seeing all around the campus.

And January 6th has become such a contrast to other events compared to something like 9-11 on the anniversaries of these events where Congress tends to come together to do bipartisan ceremonies or recognition on the floor with a moment of silence. And January 6th has just become recognized in sort of two different political realities. I don't think that there's a shared unity around this event on Capitol Hill. If anything, House Republicans continue to do work to undermine the conclusions of the January 6th committee that was led by Democrats. And still to this day, Donald Trump continues to deny the correct outcome of the 2020 election was that Joe Biden won it. So it's a bit of a sore in the immediate American history. And I think that a lot of those hard feelings

of what come out of that day continue to linger in how members see each other across the aisle. Clara, you were referring to this a moment ago as being a ceremonial day. So can you talk about the ceremony itself? What exactly happens here? What exactly is supposed to happen? It seems like a bit of a formality. Lauren Henry It is a bit of a formality. And for most January sixes in history, they're pretty boring. They happen pretty quickly. Even today, I think it wrapped in less than 30 minutes. There's a bit of a pomp and circumstance to it. The electoral votes are formally delivered to the Capitol. They are ceremonially carried

from the Senate over to the House in these, I believe they're mahogany wooden boxes presented to the House where then the states in alphabetical order declare the results of their electoral votes. And it's presided on by the president of the Senate who is currently Vice President Kamala Harris who had to preside over the official certification of the victory of Donald Trump. But it really is ceremonial. And part of that is that's the way it's intended to be. And part of this comes out of a 2022 law passed in response to the events of January 6th,

in which they really clarified the law that this was strictly a ceremonial process, that the vice president has no legal authority to overturn an election, certifying that how the electors are counted, and really try to codify into law that the rationale around January 6 could never happen again. Sue is correct in terms of the law making a big difference here. I talked to Senator

Amy Klobuchar earlier today. She was one of four members of Congress leading the electoral vote certification process. And she said by having this law in place, which had not been updated since the 1800s, that shuts down the question of whether there was wiggle room four years ago for Vice President Pence to try and change the results or having such a low threshold to allow members to object to the results. She believes that that energized the rioters to come that day to attack the Capitol. So it really sends a really large message in terms of protecting democracy. Claudia, tell us a little bit more about the actual physical security that you've been

seeing around the Capitol. There were a lot of changes here security-wise. This was not considered a national special security event, an NSSE designation. That's something we see given to the Republican conventions, the Democratic conventions. And this allows this whole of government approach. It's the highest security designation possible given by the federal government and allows for significant resources from the federal government and state, local law enforcement partners to be used in this comprehensive security plan.

And so in these four years, U.S. Capitol Police have met a punch list, basically, that was given to them of 103 recommendations that includes adding more than 300 officers to their force from four years ago. They now have more than 2300 officers. And then they also have help today. Even though it's a snowy day, they have help from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies around the country. So you mentioned earlier, Vice President Harris was presiding over the ceremony today. You had someone from the losing presidential ticket presiding over the ceremony. In her role as president of the Senate and as the

outgoing vice president, that is something that we saw in 2001 when it was then Vice President Al Gore. In 2021, it also occurred when the vice president was then Mike Pence. Now it's Kamala Harris. What do you make of just seeing this symbolically and seeing her as the person who was then Mike Pence. Now it's Kamala Harris. What do you make of just seeing this symbolically and seeing her as the person who was on that presidential ticket on the Democratic side say that it's her constitutional duty to do this? I do think that Democrats are trying to use today to push the commentary that they are the party that upholds the peaceful transfer of power. I think Kamala Harris spoke to that in terms of her role and how she saw it today.

And you have senators like the newly elected Adam Schiff from California saying Democrats were making a point not to object to any electoral vote outcomes because they want to support the peaceful transfer of power. Then I think it's worth saying, like this is not a two party problem. It was a very peaceful, boring day on Capitol Hill because Donald Trump won this election. And going into the 2024 election, had he lost, I think a lot of those fears would have been reignited about today if Donald

Trump was going to contest the outcome of the 2024 election had he lost it, which seemed like a very likely outcome as many of his supporters had already been putting actions into place to be ready to contest the election. And I do think we have to be clear here that Democrats and Republicans are not on the same page when it comes to how they approach losing presidential elections in the era of Trump. And this question about safe and peaceful transfers of power have been borne out exclusively from Donald Trump and his supporters. All right. On that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. And on Friday, a new Congress was sworn in. Republicans now hold control of both the House and the Senate.

Plus, of course, they control the White House with President-elect Trump returning to office there. And Republicans have a really big agenda of policies that they want to pass. Claudia, I want to get a sense of what all they want to do with this control of power. What's at the top of the agenda? Right. They have plenty they want to do. And as we heard, House Speaker Mike Johnson, after he was reelected to his role, say they're going to be moving to it quickly. Border immigration is top of mind. And so that is part of what Republicans want to work on next in terms of budget, in terms of partisan priorities, putting this together in a so-called reconciliation package. These are

partisan vehicles, legislative vehicles that parties can move through chambers. And so they have a lot of plans there. And at the same time, they have a long list of nominations they need to get through, some more controversial than others, and some housekeeping tasks, such as keeping the government open when a stopgap funding measure expires in March, as well as addressing the federal debt limit. Look, we don't know exactly what's going to happen in the new Congress, but I do think we have a sense already that it has a pretty good chance of being fairly chaotic.

I think you saw that just last week on Friday when Republicans reelected Speaker Mike Johnson to be their leader, but it wasn't without some defections and without some drama and a delayed vote and Donald Trump having to get involved before they could finally do it. And I do think in a lot of ways that's going to set the tone for this year because look, the best indicator of future performance is past behavior. And when Donald Trump entered office the first time, he also enjoyed a Republican controlled Congress. And yes, they got some stuff done, you know, and including the tax cuts that he hopes to extend this year. But it was chaotic. It was a roller coaster when you think you know how something's going to go. And then Donald Trump puts out a message on social media that, hey, he doesn't actually, in fact, support that bill that Republicans were just about to vote

on on the floor. So I think in terms of, and management matters here, because I think the chaos is going to be consistent. I think the questions of Speaker Mike Johnson's graphs on the speakership is going to percolate all throughout this Congress. And just one thing to keep in mind, when Donald Trump took office in 2017, Paul Ryan, then the Speaker of the House, had a 241 vote majority. And that's a whole lot more of wiggle room to try to get legislation through. Republicans have almost zero room for error. They're walking a bit of a high wire act right now. I think they're under tremendous pressure from their own party's base to deliver, especially on those issues like immigration and inflation.

One question I have though is have Republicans learned lessons from the past? You know, did they learn anything from that time when Trump was in office back in 2016? Because one thing this incoming administration is projecting is that they certainly have learned and they know how to govern more effectively this time. I think that the one of the things that has changed is that there isn't really a Trump resistance movement in Congress anymore. When he won the first time, I think there was still a fairly significant crop of older, more establishment Republicans. I do think the party ideologically, and just they like him more. I think they're

unified behind him. I think the vibe of the party is much more Donald Trump's. But look, like math is still math. And I think that one of the things we saw just in recent weeks when they almost shut down the government and didn't shut down the government and they had many failed votes when you had 30 some Republicans willing to vote down a bill that Donald Trump supported also showed you that there's tests to that unity that some Republicans will love Donald Trump and want to be part of his party and still not be willing to go where he wants to take them as president he's gonna have some challenges keeping this party together. And I think that the leadership on the Hill,

Speaker Mike Johnson, and there's also a new majority leader in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, fairly new leaders to the jobs. Like there's a big heavy lift to do things like budget reconciliation, which yes, you know, gets you around the filibuster in the Senate, but require again, almost absolute Republican unanimity. And that's a really hard thing still to find these days. Yeah, to Sue's point, we have a lot of new faces for this new Congress. We have that unruly wing in the House Republican Conference that can still cause a lot of trouble. That's what Sue's referring to when we're talking about that stopgap funding measure

that passed in December, and we saw more than 30 Republicans vote no. Now when we saw Johnson reelected, we saw a few hoping to cause a little trouble, but he was elected in the first round. It was clear that Trump is willing to weigh in, make members' lives miserable. Yes, it could very much help. So as I've heard some Senate Republicans say, one thing they're all keeping in mind is WWTMD, what would Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, do? And they look at him as one of the more eccentric members of the House who's willing to do whatever it takes to stand by his priorities for the federal budget.

Recently when there was a debate about Johnson's reelection as speaker, Massey said that you could pull out all his fingernails, you could shove a bamboo up them, cut off his finger, and he would not vote for Johnson. So it just shows how passionate he is in terms of sticking to his guns and not letting anyone derail him in terms of the trouble he may cause for others who don't want to have these kind of fights on the House floor. I hear what you're saying about Republicans in the House, but can you give us a sense of what the dynamics look like for Republicans in the Senate? They have control there and Sue is just talking a minute ago about their new leader, South Dakota Senator John Thune.

What's your sense of how effective Republicans will be at navigating legislation through the Senate? I think that's, to me this is like one of the most interesting stories to be following over the course of the next year for a couple of reasons. One, there's a whole new crop of freshmen senators who really ran as Trump loyalists and more in the ideology of like Trump conservatism or more populist conservatism and how that plays out in policy I'm very interested to see. I also think there's senators like Josh Hawley, a Republican in Missouri, who is really sort of embracing this new conservative populism of being more on the side of workers, of trying to realign the Republican Party as more of a working

class party. And where you're going to meet buzzsaws on that, frankly, is with the sort of traditional structure of the Republican Party, particularly if you look at the Trump tax cuts and extending them, that very much favors wealthy people and corporations. And so is there going to be a clash there or is it just going to be sort of politics as usual and tax policy I think is going to be a really interesting fight. And again look like John Thune is going to have the same problem that every other Senate leader has had and that's the minority. Like the filibuster still exists, Democrats still have a seat at the table, especially when it comes to things like spending

bills which Republicans like even though they control Washington, they will not be able to do that exclusively on Republican votes. You still need to have some element of minority buy-in. And Thune's ability to sort of advance a Republican agenda, but also work with Democrats to actually get things through the Senate is going to be really difficult because I think that there's a lot of people, especially those hardliners in the House, especially people outside of Congress, who just don't understand why you can't steamroll the Senate. And that has been the thing that has flummoxed presidents and House speakers for many, many, many Congresses in years. And so I think the competing power balances are going to be really

hard. I will say this though, Washington tends to be its most productive when one party controls all three chambers. So they have a tremendous amount of opportunity, certainly in 2025, to do a ton of legislation. Whether the party can pull itself together and actually do it all is an open question. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today's show. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Gordiz-Saraz. I cover Congress.

And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.