From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro.

This is the Daily.

Today.

During its first few days in power, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have vowed to put

aside their furious intra-party battles

to make Donald Trump's sweeping agenda the law of the land.

I spoke with my colleague Katie Edmondson about how likely that actually is.

It's Tuesday, January 7th.

So, Katie, take us, if you would, inside the House chamber on Monday afternoon for this

pretty momentous ceremony. Well, I think today's ceremony really underscored what is supposed to be

the pro forma nature of the January 6th congressional counting of electoral votes.

This is a performative ritual in which Congress counts the electoral votes from each state

and certifies the election of whoever won the presidency.

Obviously, if your first introduction to this ceremony was four years ago, you had a very different view of what happened on that day.

Indeed.

And so today's counting of electoral votes really was what was supposed to happen.

The house coming to order.

Okay. The House come to order. The Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint session to verify the certificates

and count the votes of the electors of the several states for president and vice president of the United States.

You had Vice President Kamala Harris overseeing the entire ceremony,

overseeing essentially Congress certifying her own loss.

The certificate of the electoral vote of the state of Maryland seems to be regular in form and authentic.

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