New York district attorney reportedly obtains Trump’s financial records – live | US news

The White House briefing has now concluded. Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The Manhattan district attorney’s office has obtained Donald Trump’s financial records, according to CNN. The news comes three days after the supreme court rejected Trump’s request to block Cy Vance’s office from gaining access to the records, which include his tax returns.
• The Senate confirmed Jennifer Granholm as the next secretary of energy. Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, was confirmed in a vote of 64 to 35. She is expected to play a major role in Joe Biden’s promises to expand renewable energy sources.
• The House held a hearing on the security failures that occurred during the Capitol insurrection. Members of a House appropriations subcommittee pressed the acting chief of the the US Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman, and the acting House sergeant at arms, Timothy Blodgett, on the insufficient preparation for the attack, despite many warning signs that Trump supporters could turn violent.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked why so many migrant children are attempting to enter the United States right now.

A reporter noted that some of Joe Biden’s critics have said it’s because his policies on managing the US-Mexican border are too lenient.

Psaki said it was actually because the conditions in some of the countries where these children are coming from are so poor that they feel they must flee.

The White House press secretary emphasized that the Biden administration would not support sending children back to their home countries without adequately reviewing their cases.

“That is not something that we’re going to do in this administration, and that is not going to be our policy,” Psaki said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the sexual misconduct allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

A reporter asked Psaki whether Joe Biden still believes Cuomo is the “gold standard” for leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic, a comment that the president made in April of last year.

Psaki said that Biden complimented a number of governors from both parties at the time because they stepped up when there was a “vacuum of leadership at the federal level”.

“He made some positive comments about Governor Cuomo and his role in New York at the time, as he did about a range of governors,” Psaki said.

Back at the White House briefing, Jen Psaki addressed Joe Biden’s announcement yesterday that he is nominating three people to the US Postal Service’s board of governors.

If the nominees are confirmed, the board would be able to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has been criticized over recent delays in mail delivery.

Psaki seemed to signal that the White House expected DeJoy to be pushed out after the board vacancies are filled.

“The Postal Service needs leadership that can and will do a better job,” Psaki said.

The Senate has confirmed Jennifer Granholm as the next secretary of energy, in a vote of 64 to 35.

After an initial delay in the Senate, more of Biden’s cabinet nominees are now being confirmed.

The confirmation of Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, comes on the heels of the confirmations of Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, earlier this week.

Asked about the delay in confirming his nominees, Biden said yesterday that he did not blame the Senate for the issue.

“I blame it on the failure to have a transition that was rational,” Biden said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not provide a specific timeline for when Joe Biden will speak to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.

Psaki simply said the call between the two leaders will “happen very soon”. Biden was expected to speak to the Saudi king yesterday, but it does not appear that the call occurred yesterday.

This comes as the US government prepares to release its unclassified report on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which has been blamed on the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

A White House reporter read out some of the caustic tweets that have caused trouble for Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

The reporter asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki whether Joe Biden believes those tweets live up to his pledge that his administration would be committed to treating people with respect.

Psaki replied by noting that Tanden has apologized for her past comments and has said she will live up to Biden’s “expectation for a high bar of civility”.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki is now holding her daily briefing with reporters.

Psaki opened the briefing by noting that Joe Biden will participate in an event this evening to mark 50 million vaccine doses administered since he took office.

Biden pledged to distribute 100 million vaccine doses across his first 100 days in office, but his administration has been outpacing that goal in recent weeks.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

As of 19 February, there were 253 bills pending across the United States that would restrict access to the ballot, according to the latest tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

The volume of bills illustrates how aggressively some states have moved to restrict access to voting weeks after an election in which there was record turnout.

Just weeks ago, the Brennan Center tallied up that there were 165 restrictive bills across 33 states, a major jump from the 35 bills that were pending at the same time a year ago.

One of the states where there has been the most activity is Georgia, where the state legislature is considering a wave of proposals to limit absentee and in person early voting after those voting options helped carry Joe Biden and two Democratic senators to victory in the state.

The Brennan Center also found there were 704 bills pending to expand voter access.

Vice-President Kamala Harris visited a pharmacy in Washington this morning to highlight the Biden administration’s efforts to distribute coronavirus vaccines directly to pharmacies.

The Giant pharmacy that Harris visited is one of more than 7,000 across the country where Americans can receive coronavirus vaccine doses.

During the pharmacy visit, Harris described some of the side effects that she experienced after receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine.

“The first dose, I was fine. The second dose, I thought I was fine. Got up early in the morning, went to work, and then midday, I realized, ‘Yeah, I might I might need to slow down a bit,’” Harris said. “Just that one day, and then it was fine.”

Health experts have said that some people may experience mild flu-like symptoms after the second vaccine dose, but that is a normal immune response and should not deter anyone from receiving a vaccine.

At the House hearing on the Capitol insurrection, Democratic congresswoman Rose DeLauro pressed the acting chief of the US Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman, on how many USCP officers are under investigation for their actions on January 6.

Pittman told her, “Right now we have 35 officers that are under investigation, and we do have six police officers that have been suspended with their police powers being revoked, so those investigations are ongoing at this time.”

The investigations come after footage circulated of law enforcement officers posing for photos with some of the insurrectionists on January 6.

Pittman said she expected the investigations to take between 60 and 90 days, and she committed to making the findings of the investigations public once they become available.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi briefly misidentified Republican Senator Ron Johnson as Don Johnson, as in the actor who starred in “Miami Vice”.

Pelosi said Johnson, who amplified a baseless conspiracy theory about the Capitol insurrection during a Senate hearing earlier this week, “seems to be taking the lead” on the Republican response to the January 6 attack.