Security fencing surrounds Capitol Hill as snow blankets the region ahead of a joint session of Congress to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the presidential election, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Congress will gather noontime Monday to certify President-elect Donald Trump’s election under the tightest national security level possible. Layers of tall black fencing flank the U.S. Capitol complex in a stark reminder of what happened on this day four years ago.

An overview of what will be happening at the Capitol

Under heavy security, lawmakers in the snowy Capitol will gather at 1 p.m. ET to count the electoral votes in the 2024 election and declare Donald Trump the winner.

The joint session, which takes place on Jan. 6 every four years, is the final step after the Electoral College meets in December to officially elect the winner of the White House.

At the center of the process are sealed electoral certificates from each state, which are brought into the House chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion. Those same boxes were rushed to safety four years ago as rioters breached the Capitol.

Bipartisan representatives of both chambers will read the results out loud and do an official count. No challenges to the results are expected this year, which means the process should move quickly.

Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, will preside over the session and certify her defeat to Trump.

Trump’s win has boosted Republicans’ faith in elections — for now

Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump urged supporters to head to the Capitol to protest Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

“Will be wild!” Trump promised on Twitter a few weeks before Jan. 6, 2021. And it was.

This year, the only turbulence preceding the quadrennial ratification of the presidential election resulted from House Republicans fighting among themselves over who should be speaker.

Hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions are in limbo as a DC court awaits Trump’s White House return

It’s the largest prosecution in Justice Department history — with reams of evidence, harrowing videos and hundreds of convictions of the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Now Donald Trump’s return to power has thrown into question the future of the more than 1,500 federal cases brought over the last four years.

Jan. 6 trials, guilty pleas and sentencings have continued chugging along in Washington’s federal court despite Trump’s promise to pardon rioters, whom he’s called “political prisoners” and “hostages” he contends were treated too harshly.

In a statement Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Justice Department prosecutors “have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity.”

Harris will oversee certification of her defeat to Trump four years after he sparked Capitol attack

Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday is set to preside over the certification of her defeat to Donald Trump four years after he tried to stop the very process that will now return him to the White House.

In a video message, Harris described her role as a “sacred obligation” to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.

“As we have seen, our democracy can be fragile,” she said. “And it is up to each of us to stand up for our most cherished principles.”

Harris will be joining a short list of other vice presidents to oversee the ceremonial confirmation of their election loss as part of their role of presiding over the Senate. Richard Nixon did it after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Al Gore followed suit when the U.S. Supreme Court tipped the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

No violence expected this year, but what happens in another four years?

What’s unclear is if Jan. 6, 2021, was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or if this year’s expected calm becomes the outlier. The U.S. is struggling to cope with its political and cultural differences at a time when democracy worldwide is threatened. Trump calls Jan. 6, 2021, a “day of love.”

“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 it’s historically unprecedented for U.S. voters to do what they did in November, reelecting Trump after he publicly refused to step aside last time. Returning to power an emboldened leader who’s demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.

Lawmakers brace for Trump’s promised Jan. 6 pardons

The fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has a new focus as lawmakers brace for the prospect that President-elect Donald Trump may soon pardon many of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes for their actions related to the riot.