Monday’s certification by Congress of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was the first official step in the peaceful transfer of power. From outside the White House to the U.S. Capitol, the streets of Washington were blanketed in freshly fallen snow, the wintry scene providing the only complications to members of the House and Senate carrying out their duties to affirm the election results.
It was a marked contrast to the same proceedings four years earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters flooded the capital city’s streets and, ultimately, the same chamber where federal legislators were attempting to gather and carry out their prescribed duty. That day would ultimately devolve into violence, deaths and hundreds of cases against those charged with unlawful acts related to the attack.
Photographers from The Associated Press were present on both days, capturing in real time the violence and aftermath in 2021 — and, in 2025, retracing their own steps, visiting the locations around Washington that played key roles on that fateful day and capturing images that make possible a side-by-side comparison of what differences can be marked in just a few years.
From the Washington Monument to the White House to the U.S. Capitol, where rioters unleashed the most violent attack on the seat of American legislative power in 200 years, and Congress four years later carried out an uneventful and peaceful certification, the AP was there.
