Perhaps no recent day has been as eventful as January 6, 2021 was. Two Senate races, a sitting US President inciting violence against the country’s Capitol, and the much anticipated certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ presidential victory. As the nation reckons with yesterday’s momentous events, we will take a look at everything that happened and think about where we go from here.
While the majority of Senate races were decided in November along with the presidential race, the state of Georgia has a rule dictating that if no one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the two top contenders go on to a runoff election to decide the winner. That was the case with both Senate races in Georgia, where Reverend Raphael Warnock (D) challenged incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R) and Jon Ossoff (D) challenged incumbent David Perdue (R). After a month of intense campaigning, over 4 million Georgians voted early or showed up at the polls to elect their state’s next senators. But the stakes were even higher than they are during typical Senate races: with Republicans holding 50 seats in the Senate, the two runoff elections in Georgia were to determine whether Democrats would flip the Senate, gaining two additional seats to total 50, like their Republican counterparts. In the case of an equally split Senate, the President of the body—who will be Kamala Harris—will become the tie-breaking vote of the chamber.
The good: Both Warnock and Ossoff won their races, beating the incumbent Republican senators with 50.8% and 50.4% of the vote, respectively. Senator-elect Warnock will become Georgia’s first Black Senator, while Senator-elect Ossoff will become Georgia’s first Jewish Senator and, at age 33, the youngest Democratic Senator elected since Joe Biden in 1973.
While the Georgia race unfolded, other events were happening in the nation’s capital. In the Capitol, a joint session of Congress was meeting to certify the Electoral College votes to affirm Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. While the certification is typically a ceremonial step, 14 Republican Senators and over 100 Republican House members planned to object to the results in states like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, echoing President Trump’s unfounded and false claims about election fraud after a month of losses in the nation’s courts.
At the same time, President Trump stood in front of thousands of the supporters he encouraged to travel to Washington DC for the so-called “Save America” march (“Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he tweeted on December 20). During his speech, he attempted to pressure his own Vice President, Mike Pence, to reject the results of the Electoral College—something Pence is constitutionally not authorized to do, as he explained in a letter before the joint session of Congress.
Additionally, Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani urged the supporters to “fight like hell” against what he calls, time and time again without any proof, a stolen and fraudulent election. “We will never give up, we will never concede,” “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and Congressmen and women,” Trump said. “If we are wrong we will be made fools of, but if we’re right a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat,” Giuliani added. To Republican congressmen voting to certify the election, the President’s son said: “You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely,” adding that the rally “should be a message to all the Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight. The people who did nothing to stop the steal. This gathering should send a message to them: This isn’t their Republican Party anymore! This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party!”
After this rhetoric, it is perhaps not surprising that Trump’s supporters did just that: they marched down to Capitol Hill, where we saw a scene many of us never expected to see in the United States of America, the breaching and entering into what is supposed to be one of the safest, and most sacred, institutions of the country. Vice President Pence and congressional leadership were quickly evacuated, as other congressmen and women were given gas masks, told to prepare to duck under chairs and desks, and eventually escorted to safe locations within the Capitol building. Meanwhile, the mob, carrying Trump paraphernalia and even Confederate flags, overpowered Capitol security and made their way into the building. Inside, they took over the halls and chambers, broke windows and smashed items inside Congressional offices, all while chanting for President Trump and even removing an American flag to replace with a “Trump 2020” one.
As members of both parties denounced the horror, President Trump was urged to call his supporters off, and to send in the National Guard to restore peace and order in the Capitol building—a move he was reportedly hesitant to make (despite repeatedly threatening to send the National Guard to quash peaceful protests against systemic racism and police brutality last year). Finally, President Trump tweeted a video in which he asked his supporters to remain peaceful and go home, despite doubling down on his baseless claims that the election was stolen from him. In what many have interpreted as a wink and a nod to the rioters, Trump sympathetically added “we love you, you’re very special.” The National Guard and FBI units were eventually mobilized to empty out and restore safety to the building.
The ugly: the sitting President of the country explicitly incited an attack against the Congress of the United States. Furthermore, he still has not unequivocally condemned the horrible acts that took place in the Capitol, which so far have led to four deaths, nor given up his false claims of election fraud. In fact, the President tweeted the following amid the chaos: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Twitter subsequently blocked the President’s account for 12 hours, warning the suspension could become permanent. Since then, Facebook has followed suit, blocking the President’s account at least until after the presidential transition is complete.
After the Capitol was cleared, Senators and House members returned to their duty, with more resolve than before. “I want to say to the American people: The United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation,” soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a fiery speech. After the day’s events, some Republicans who had said they would object to the certification, like Kelly Loeffler, backtracked and pledged to accept and certify the presidential election’s result. Others, despite attempting to distance themselves from the chaos that their own repetition of President Trump’s claims sowed, nonetheless decided to go forth with their objections.
The bad: after a day of attacks against the Capitol building encouraged by false claims of electoral fraud, 147 Republicans—eight senators and 139 representatives—sustained their objection to the certification of votes in the states or Arizona and Pennsylvania for the same baseless reasons that incited the attacks in the first place.
Despite the delay to the certification of the votes—congressmen and women remained in the chambers until four in the morning after the interruption by the mob and subsequent objections by Republicans—Congress finally certified President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, affirming him and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice President of the United States.
What comes next?
President-elect Biden’s win has been certified, and he will be sworn into office on January 20. Meanwhile, a growing number of legislators, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have called for President Trump to be immediately removed from office following yesterday’s events. Representative Adam Kinzinger became the first Republican to join the call for the President’s removal, which could be enacted through impeachment proceedings or through triggering the 25th Amendment. The latter would require Vice President Pence and a majority of the President’s Cabinet to declare Trump unfit for office. Additionally, several members of the Trump administration have resigned in protest, most notably Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation and wife of Senator Mitch McConnell.
While it is unclear what the next 13 days until Inauguration will bring, January 6 will go down as a dark day in American history. President Trump’s dangerous actions, and those of his Republican enablers, will never be forgotten. Today we hope and urge that the rest of our elected officials will step up to the challenge at hand, reject further dangerous misinformation and false accusations, and lead the long, difficult, yet necessary road of uniting and reconciling our country.