This column first appeared in The Amendment, a biweekly newsletter by Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor-at-large. Subscribe today to get early access to her analysis.

On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris performed what was perhaps the most important duty in her historic four-year tenure: presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the results of the 2024 election.

One of her final acts as vice president was also the latest unprecedented moment in our politics. Harris was not the first vice president to certify their own loss. However, she was the first to certify the win of a former president who falsely claimed victory and encouraged his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol to thwart the certification process. 

The violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, changed Americans’ assumptions about the integrity of our democratic process — and was a prologue to Donald Trump’s return to power. 

For generations, most Americans have paid little attention to the job of vice president or the certification of election results. The peaceful transfer of power was something voters long took for granted as a formality, a footnote, a foregone conclusion. Now, it is a moment and a role that has become a marker of the integrity of our political institutions. And by presiding over it, Harris joined a long line of Black women who have done the work of protecting our democracy, even in defeat. 

Harris’ role was technically ceremonial — one that was explicitly clarified by Congress in the wake of the Capitol attack to say that the vice president holds only “ministerial duties” in the electoral vote counting process and has “no power to solely determine” the validity or votes of electors. But it’s a role that has taken on added symbolism and consequence. 

As the Democratic nominee for president last year, Harris pitched herself as a defender against the threats to democracy. Black women, who voted overwhelmingly for Harris in November, cited protecting democracy and freedoms as among the most important issues of the 2024 election. 

On the campaign trail, Harris pledged that she would certify the election. Her successor, JD Vance, declined during the vice presidential debate in October to say whether he would do the same and claimed that Trump oversaw a peaceful transfer of power on January 6, despite the president’s failure to intervene when his supporters threatened to kill his vice president. 

Vance looked on Monday from the House chamber as the results of the election were read, just one of the Republicans in the room who has denied the legitimate results of the 2020 election. 

Harris gaveled in the joint session “pursuant to the Constitution and the laws of the United States” shortly after 1 p.m., greeting Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, an election denier who also contested the results. 

In acknowledgement of her role presiding over the Senate, Harris was repeatedly addressed as Madam President during the proceeding, which lasted roughly half an hour. She stood stoically as the election results were read amid occasional cheers from lawmakers of both parties. 

The danger four years ago was not just at the Capitol — and was also personal for Harris, then the vice president-elect. She was inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters when a pipe bomb was discovered near a park bench outside the building, and she was among those evacuated from the building. Then, it would take nearly 15 hours to complete the certification process. 

In a video message posted Monday morning, Harris called her role in the certification process a “sacred obligation,” one she would uphold “guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and my unwavering faith in the American people.” Her words and actions are a stark reminder of Harris’ role, not just as president of the Senate, but as a Black woman with a particular lens on the American experiment. It is one her predecessor carried out under duress and over the objection of his boss.

Even as January 6, 2021, seems to fade from our national consciousness, it is a day that looms large as a cautionary tale about the fragility of our system of government. It is a fragility Black women are familiar with, and have fought to strengthen in an effort to perfect our entire union. 

Today, it was Harris who again made history, this time as a linchpin in the work of restoring our shaken faith in the democratic process.