On Wednesday, Trump supporters stormed and broke into the U.S. Capitol building while Congress was in a joint session counting the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election.

The morning began as a victory for Democrats with Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock both winning Georgia’s run-off elections handing Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

President Donald Trump gave a fiery speech to his supporters at 11 a.m. on the National Mall still falsely claiming in his remarks that he had won the election.

Dressed in riot gear and very few face masks, pro-Trump supporters pushed through barriers and law enforcement officers to get into the Capitol building. They broke windows and climbed the building to get in. The last time the U.S. Capitol was overrun was by the British in the War of 1812 when the building was burned down.

A joint session of Congress, lead by Vice President Mike Pence was taking place to count the electoral college votes, an event that happens every four years. It was expected that some Republicans would argue against the vote for Joe Biden. The doors to both the House and Senate were locked once the protesters got into the building. Pence and all other politicians were escorted away to safety, including the ballot boxes that would have most likely been destroyed.

Demonstrators found themselves on the Senate floor, one man even stole a podium. Another snapped a photo sitting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and stealing a piece of paper from her desk. For the first time in history, a Confederate flag was carried through the Capitol building, an event that didn’t even occur during the four years the Confederate states existed.

Washington, D.C. went under a 6 p.m, curfew that night. All protesters were eventually removed from the building. The chaos that occurred in the nation’s Capitol stoked outrage from people all over the country. Trump released a video statement asking for the rioters to go home but still focused on his false election claims. Twitter has now temporarily locked his account. On Thursday, Mark Zuckerburg stated that the president is now banned from Facebook and Instagram until the end of his term.

Late Wednesday night, Congress was able to officially declare Biden as the next president of the United States.

On Thursday, Pelosi called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump to remove him from office.

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Demi Tsatsaronis

Article by Demi Tsatsaronis

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