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RSN: Sanders Urging Biden to Do More to Excite Progressives
14 September 20
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Sanders Urging Biden to Do More to Excite Progressives
Sydney Ember, The New York Times
Ember writes: "Bernie Sanders has been sounding more direct notes of caution to the Biden campaign, saying the centrist former vice president should work harder to appeal to young voters and Latinos."
hen Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race in early April, he vowed that the progressive movement he championed would carry on. And while at nearly every turn, he has encouraged his supporters to unite behind Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, he and others in the party’s left wing have tried to nudge the former vice president more toward the policy goals his movement supports.
In recent days, he has been sounding more direct notes of caution to the Biden campaign, urging in public and in private that the former vice president, a centrist, must do more to excite progressive voters. He has emphasized, in particular, that Mr. Biden should work harder to appeal to young voters and Latinos; both are groups that overwhelmingly supported Mr. Sanders in the primary but Mr. Biden has so far struggled to connect with as the nominee.
“Senator Sanders is confident that Joe Biden is in a very strong position to win this election, but nevertheless feels there are areas the campaign can continue to improve upon,’‘ Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, said in a statement on Saturday, which was first reported by The Washington Post. “He has been in direct contact with the Biden team and has urged them to put more emphasis on how they will raise wages, create millions of good paying jobs, lower the cost of prescription drugs and expand health care coverage.”
Supporters wait for President Donald Trump to speak at a rally at Xtreme Manufacturing, Sept. 13, 2020, in Henderson, Nevada. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Trump Ignores Science at Dangerous Indoor Rally
Stephen Collinson, CNN
Collinson writes: "President Donald Trump offered a glaring new example of his refusal to put medical science before politics with a large indoor rally Sunday night that made a mockery of social distancing, while the pandemic he mismanaged has now claimed more than 194,000 American lives."
The event in Nevada -- his second rally in the state in as many days -- did not only risk the health of those present, thousands of whom were packed together inside a manufacturing facility in defiance of the state's ban on local gatherings of 50 people or more. It also has the potential to turn into a super spreader event that could seed Covid-19 outbreaks in the wider community. Trump hadn't held an indoor rally in nearly three months, since his last one, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after which the city saw a surge in cases and multiple campaign staffers along with Secret Service agents tested positive for the virus.
The jarring scenes of the indoor event clashed with footage from the first weekend of NFL games that went ahead in cavernous empty stadiums, reflecting how almost alone the President, who might be expected to set an example, is responsible for the most dangerous breaches of his own government's coronavirus recommendations.
CNN's Brian Stelter reported that major television networks, including CNN, decided not to send their crews and correspondents into the rally for their own safety. It's not unusual for media companies to take steps to shield their employees in war zones abroad, but such precautions are exceedingly rare on home soil.
The same ditching of inconvenient facts to service Trump's personal whims, political goals and conspiracy theories will likely be highlighted again on Monday when the President visits one of the raging Western wildfires in California, where more than 3 million acres have burned this year and 22 people have died since mid-August. The President insists that the fires are caused by poor forest management. Scientists argue that they have been exacerbated by climate change.
Accelerating efforts to reshape reality
As the election fast approaches, the administration's broader attempt to reshape reality to benefit and accommodate an unrestrained President is accelerating, including among government officials who appear to be trying to stop the full story of the coronavirus emergency from coming out. Trump's decision not to share what he knew about the deadly potential of the disease back in February -- detailed in Bob Woodward's new book -- may have cost tens of thousands of lives. The economic effects of the pandemic are devastating. Yet as his incessant demands to open states -- based on political motives rather than scientific rigor -- show, the President is still not taking the human toll of Covid-19 with consuming seriousness.
A similar effort to create a reality that Trump would prefer is underway as he repeatedly lies about what he says is a Democratic attempt to rig the vote in November. In fact, his own political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security are accused of trying to conceal the full extent of Russian election interference designed to prop up his trailing campaign. CNN reported last week that the same whistleblower who raised that complaint had also cautioned that officials had also modified intelligence assessments to downplay the threat posed by White supremacists and to line them up with false comments made by the President about Antifa and leftist and anarchist groups.
New signs of politically-motivated investigations at the Justice Department are meanwhile adding to Attorney General William Barr's reputation as Trump's personal enforcer and also to concerns that an investigation he ordered into the origins of the Russia probe is being cooked up to offer Trump a pre-election surprise.
Across Washington, it seems to be a similar story as the truths and facts are remolded to support a President who admitted last week that his worldview and perception of reality are filtered through hour after hour of Fox News opinion shows whose counsel he appears to value over some of the highly qualified experts in his own government.
In a new example of the President picking conspiratorial or fantastical positions that match his political goals, rather than those rooted in fact and science, he complained over the weekend that California's raging wildfires were the result of poor forest management. This is in line with his previously expressed belief that state governments need to "rake" and "clean" forest floors to remove the kindling for wildfires. Many scientists have said that drought and longer fire seasons are a direct consequence of climate change and have produced peer-reviewed studies to back up their conclusions. But such a conclusion is inconvenient to the President's desire to promote fossil fuels and would require him to challenge conservative orthodoxy.
"Talk to a firefighter, if you think that climate change isn't real," the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" on Sunday. "It seems like this administration are the last vestiges of the Flat Earth Society of this generation."
One of Trump's top economic advisers, Peter Navarro, warned in several academic papers that climate change was one of the most serious potential environment challenges of the age. But in an interview with Tapper, in which he repeatedly refused to answer questions about the new Woodward book, Navarro seems to have changed his views to accommodate those of Trump.
"For many, many years, particularly because of budget cutbacks, there was no inclination to manage our forests. That's actually a real issue," Navarro said.
An all-powerful President
The triumph of Trump's political ideology over fact and truth underscores the way he has systematically removed restraining personalities and forces from his administration. In many cases, the government now runs much like a massive version of the Trump organization, all working to fulfill the desires of the all-powerful boss. While Trump had now-disgraced legal fixer Michael Cohen in his business life to impose his will, he now has loyalists who are working to subvert what they see as the "Deep State" opposition in the bureaucracy to a President who demands total loyalty.
It's not clear that the power grabs of the President will be anything like a decisive factor in the election, despite warnings by former President Barack Obama during the Democratic convention that the very future of American democracy and the integrity of the republic are on the ballot.
Trump's efforts to stifle good governance draw big headlines in Washington but don't resonate as much elsewhere in a country staggering amid a pandemic and consequent economic disaster that have destroyed the rhythms of normal life. Political maneuverings at the top of a government agency can often seen arcane. One lesson from countries in places like Eastern Europe, where democracy has been challenged, is that damage to good governance only becomes clear in retrospect, following months and years of erosion.
Yet Trump, a President who was impeached for trying to use government power to coerce a foreign nation, Ukraine, to interfere in a US election, appears to be sending a warning of how he would behave in a second term freed from any future accountability from voters. Government agencies and departments often reflect the priorities and interests of a President. But the recent attempts by Trump aides to reshape facts, truth and data is highly unusual.
Trump aides part with reality in Woodward defense
Troubling revelations by Woodward about Trump's negligence amid a pandemic that has killed more than 194,000 Americans were compounded by new suggestions of fact-twisting by top Trump officials.
A federal health official told CNN on Saturday that Trump's communications team at the US Department of Health and Human Services pushed to change language of weekly science reports released by the CDC.
Former Trump campaign aide turned chief HHS spokesman Michael Caputo and his team demanded to see reports out of the CDC before they are released, a senior administration official said. The story was first reported by Politico.
The source said some federal health officials at the CDC believe the interference to be an effort to change communications by the CDC's scientists so as not to contradict the President, who argues that the pandemic is all but over and it's time to fully reopen the country.
Caputo defended the behavior and praised Dr. Paul Alexander, who has reportedly been adding political content to CDC reports tracking the emergency.
"Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists," Caputo said in a statement. "Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers."
The news is likely to stir more alarm at the way the administration has often prioritized the President's political goals — on issues like masks and economic and school openings -- in ways that repeatedly ignored science and facts.
The administration's credibility on such issues and the need to separate politics and epidemiology will be incredibly important in convincing Americans to take a vaccine to end the pandemic when one is eventually widely available.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pushed back Sunday on the idea that Trump had managed the pandemic according to his political requirements rather than as the massive public health emergency that it is.
"I disagree that the President took political calculations into a global pandemic," McDaniel, one of a string of Trump allies sent to Sunday talk shows to try to push back against the Woodward revelations.
But when she was asked by "Meet the Press" anchor Chuck Todd on NBC why the US had 25% of the world's Covid-19 deaths, she repeated a misleading claim that has come to typify the misinformation and illogical responses often used by Trump aides throughout the pandemic. "Well, we do have more testing," McDaniel said.
Estacada, Oregon. (photo: Reuters)
'All Gone': Residents Return to Burned-Out Oregon Towns as Many West Coast Wildfires Keep Burning
Adrees Latif and Patrick Fallon, Reuters
Excerpt: "Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday as smoldering wildfires still ravaged U.S. Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction."
A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) and killing more than two dozen people since early August.
Tracy Koa, a high school teacher, returned to Talent, Oregon, on Saturday after evacuating with her partner, Dave Tanksle, and 13-year-old daughter to find her house and neighborhood reduced to heaps of ash and rubble.
“We knew that it was gone,” Koa said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “But then you pull up, and the devastation of just every home, you think of every family and every situation and every burnt-down car, and there are just no words for it.”
Crews in Jackson County, Oregon, where Talent is located, were hoping to venture into rural areas where the Almeda Fire has abated slightly with slowing winds, sending up thick plumes of smoke as the embers burned. From Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99.
Community donation centers popped up around Jackson County over the weekend, including one in the parking lot of Home Depot in Phoenix, where farmers brought a pickup truck bed full of watermelons and people brought water and other supplies.
Farther north in Clackamas County, Dane Valentine, 28, showed a Reuters journalist the remains of his house.
“This is my home,” he said. “Yep. All gone.”
Down the road, a woman with a Trump 2020 sign on her home, pointed a shotgun at the journalist and shouted at him to leave.
“You’re the reason they’re setting fires up here,” she said, perhaps referring to false rumors that left-wing activists had sparked the wildfires.
After four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked last week.
Still, emergency officials worried that the shifting weather might not be enough to quell the fires.
“We’re concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide a lot of rain here in the Medford region and it’s going to bring increased winds,” Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday.
At least 10 people have been killed in Oregon, according to the office of emergency management. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has said dozens of people remain missing across three counties.
There were 34 active fires burning in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the state’s office of emergency management website.
CLIMATE CHANGE ‘WAKE-UP CALL’
Thick smoke and ash from the fires have darkened skies over the Pacific Northwest since Labor Day last Monday, creating some of the world’s worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors. Satellite images showed the smoke was wafting inland in an easterly direction, the Bureau of Land Management said on Twitter on Sunday.
Drought conditions, extreme temperatures and high winds in Oregon created the “perfect firestorm” for the blazes to grow, Brown told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“This is a wake-up call for all of us that we’ve got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change,” the Democratic governor said.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, was scheduled to travel to California and meet with federal and state officials on Monday. He has said that Western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, as opposed to warming temperatures, and has accused them of poor forest management.
In California, evacuations were ordered for the northern tip of the San Gabriel Valley suburb of Arcadia as the Bobcat Fire threatened communities.
At Wilderness Park in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, firefighters prepared to stave off the blaze as it worked its way downhill.
Steep terrain and dry hills that have not burned for 60 years are providing fuel for the blaze, which started over the Labor Day weekend.
As the smoke that has been clogging the air and blocking heat from the sun begins to lift, firefighters expect the weather to heat up and fire activity could increase, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
All told in California, nearly 17,000 firefighters were battling 29 major wildfires on Sunday, Cal Fire said.
Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over blazes in many parts of the state, and some evacuated residents in Madera County near where the massive Creek Fire was burning, were allowed to go back home.
More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks. About 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of land have been burned in the state, according to Cal Fire.
A worker in the meat industry. (photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
Trump's OSHA Is Fining Companies Pennies for Pandemic Violations
Timothy Noah, The New Republic
Noah writes: "America's workplace watchdog has been largely AWOL during the most significant public health crisis in our lifetime."
READ MORE
A Broward County Sheriff's Office vehicle is parked outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. (photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP)
In Florida, Schools Under Pressure to Get Rid of Police Officers
Jessica Bakeman, NPR
Bakeman writes: "After a school shooting left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the county sheriff's office decided to arm its school-based deputies with automatic rifles."
It was nine days after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting, and Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said issuing the weapons was "a stopgap measure to create a heightened sense of security around the district."
Olivia, who was a freshman at the time at another Broward County school, remembers getting off the bus and making eye contact with one of several police officers with AR-15s in their hands.
"I looked over, and he looked right at me. And the way he stared at me was terrifying," she said.
"He looked like I was a threat. I didn't feel like a person anymore, like all he was seeing was my skin. It just hurt so much .... to be seen like this, just because I'm Black."
Olivia, who is now 17, asked to be identified only by her given name, because she has been threatened on social media after participating in Black Lives Matter protests this spring.
She is just one of many Black students who say the presence of armed law enforcement officers in Florida schools makes them feel less safe.
Since a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, and protesters filled the streets in historic uprisings, major school districts throughout the country have voted to get police out of schools, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and some schools in Chicago.
Student activists in South Florida want the same thing to happen here. But they face what could be an insurmountable challenge: widespread security fears in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Shortly after the massacre two and half years ago, Florida passed a law requiring a police officer or armed guard on every campus.
A report earlier this month from the University of Florida found the number of police on school campuses statewide nearly doubled since then — and with that big jump in officers came a big jump in arrests at school.
Civil rights groups are working to get the law repealed. In the meantime, students here are pushing for whatever they can get — even if it's just pulling some funding away from police and using it instead to hire more teachers, social workers and counselors.
Big jump in arrests
The study conducted by a top education researcher at UF found that the increase in police stationed at Florida schools was driven largely by new officers at elementary schools. Arrests at schools jumped by up to 82 percent, the report found.
The higher presence of police officers at schools also resulted in more student disciplinary infractions being reported to law enforcement, "particularly for less severe infractions and among middle schoolers," according to the report.
"There was little consistent evidence that the presence of law enforcement decreased the number of behavioral incidents occurring, indicating that school-based law enforcement were not necessarily making schools safer," wrote the report's author, F. Chris Curran, director of UF's Education Policy Research Center.
"We should have some real concerns about the potential tradeoffs that come with putting law enforcement in schools," particularly the risk of exacerbating the school-to-prison pipeline, Curran said during an interview.
Several incidents involving South Florida police and Black children in recent years illustrate student activists' and researchers' concerns.
Earlier this year, a cell phone video surfaced showing a Miami-Dade school resource officer threatening to shoot a group of Black students while placing her hand on her gun. Also, in Orlando, a cop stationed at a charter school was fired after arresting a 6-year-old Black girl — an incident that went viral nationally and sparked an unsuccessful effort to pass a state law setting a minimum age for arrest.
Olivia and her fellow student activists in Broward County pointed to another arrest of a Black teenager last year to demonstrate why Black kids see police as threatening rather than protective.
Broward Sheriff's Office deputies were caught on video violently arresting DeLucca Rolle, a then-15-year-old Black student at a high school in Coral Springs, Fla. Police had been called to break up a fight in the parking lot of a McDonald's near the school where students often hang out in the afternoons waiting to get picked up.
Officers pepper sprayed Rolle, punched him and repeatedly slammed his head into the pavement, fracturing his nose. Two deputies now face misdemeanor battery charges.
"That's why we don't want police in schools, because they're just another way of white supremacy sneaking into the schools and breaking our students down," Olivia said.
Joy, another Black 17-year-old high school senior in Broward County, also asked not to be identified by her full name because she has faced online harassment.
"They feel like because we are children, they can continue to abuse their power," Joy said, referring to police. "That is why removing cops from schools is to protect the Black community, because when cops are in schools, they're not here to protect us."
Broward County Public Schools spent $50.6 million on safety and security in 2019-20, with a total budget of about $4.7 billion.
Gregory Tony, Broward's first Black sheriff, said he is disappointed to hear that Black students feel threatened and intimidated by his deputies, and he said he's trying to improve that. He argued schools need police to protect students from serious threats like shooters, and he said he wants Black kids to feel protected, too.
"As a Black man, I live the injustices," Tony said. "I felt it as a young kid in the street. I was George Floyd. At 16, I got slammed against the ground. I had a knee on my neck in Philadelphia by a bunch of overly aggressive and abusive officers. Fortunately, I wasn't choked to death for eight minutes and 46 seconds. But I have never forgotten that experience.
He recently allocated $1 million of the agency's budget toward racial equity and implicit bias training.
Tony was appointed sheriff last year after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended the previous sheriff, Scott Israel, over the agency's mistakes in responding to the Parkland shooting.
Tony, who was re-elected last month, said school police still carry long rifles, including AR-15s, on campuses, like Olivia remembered seeing shortly after the Parkland shooting. But now they're instructed to store them rather than carry them around, according to Tony.
Just south in Miami-Dade County, student activists have long fought to get rid of police in public schools.
Power U, a youth empowerment group that supports student activists in Miami-Dade, hosted virtual webinars and phone bank events throughout the summer to mobilize a renewed push for reallocating funding spent on police to mental health care.
Power U argues the district is going above and beyond the state mandate.
The district has its own police agency, which student activists believe is an unnecessary duplication of the county's department. Miami-Dade Schools Police is the largest school district police force in the country, with nearly 500 officers. There's a canine unit, a bicycle unit, a high-tech surveillance infrastructure and a team of investigators. Schools have other security staff, as well.
The district's $5.4 billion budget in 2019-20 included about $53.4 million for police and security. Spending on mental health was $8.4 million. That will jump to $11.3 million for the current school year because of an increase in state funding.
"For the past 15 to 16 years, we've been asking to defund police officers. We've been asking to have mental health. We've been asking for that," said Keno Walker, a Black staff organizer for Power U who started with the group when he was 13, and was himself a student in the district.
"And now, in this moment, the world is asking for it," he said. "Don't be left behind."
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho did not agree to an interview for this story. His office sent a statement from the district's police chief, Edwin Lopez.
"Miami Dade Schools Police Department School Resource Officers are trained to provide the necessary support for children in an effort to guide them as needed, always utilizing arrest as an ultimate last resort," the statement said.
Civil rights groups pressure Florida legislature to repeal law
The ACLU of Florida and the Southern Poverty Law Center have consistently opposed increasing the police presence in Florida schools and allowing some teachers and other staff to be armed, arguing the changes imposed after the Parkland shooting would hurt students of color in particular.
The ACLU says it will lobby state lawmakers to repeal the law requiring a police officer or armed guard on every school campus. But short of that, it wants an amendment to allow school districts more flexibility.
"For instance, a school district could just increase patrols around the school ... to make sure that police are close by if something happens on campus, but not integrated into the schools," said Michelle Morton, research coordinator and policy counsel for the ACLU of Florida.
But mass shootings happen fast. Ryan Petty's 14-year-old daughter Alaina was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and he worries if officers aren't on campus, dozens of students could be injured or killed while waiting for them to arrive and confront a shooter.
Petty, who is white, now sits on the Florida Board of Education. He recently wrote op-eds for Newsweek and CNN urging school districts not to abandon their relationships with police departments.
"Look, I'm a father that lost a daughter. And I can say the words: these are low probability events. But they're high impact," Petty said. "And so we want to prevent those, and we want to mitigate those as much as possible."
He said police are the ones to do that — even though, he acknowledged, the officer assigned to the Parkland high school didn't go in during the shooting there.
That, Petty said, isn't an argument for no police officers in schools — but for better ones.
Amiram Ben-Uliel in the Lod District Court on May 18, 2020. (photo: Avshalom Sassoni/ AP)
Israeli Handed 3 Life Sentences for Killing Palestinian Family
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "An Israeli court handed a Jewish settler three life sentences Monday for murdering a Palestinian toddler and his parents in an arson attack on their home in the occupied West Bank."
Amiram Ben-Uliel, 25, was sentenced by the Lod court following his conviction in May for the 2015 killings. He was also found guilty of two counts each of attempted murder and arson, along with conspiracy to commit a hate crime.
The arson attack killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. His mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali's four-year-old brother Ahmad survived with burns on his body.
The settler had sought to avenge the killing of an Israeli a month earlier.
Ben-Uliel chose the Dawabsheh family home and another dwelling in Duma village, near Nablus, on the assumption they were inhabited and, before firebombing them, spray-painted "Revenge" and "Long Live King Messiah" on their walls.
The 25-year-old was acquitted of a charge of belonging to a "terrorist" organisation.
He first threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a house whose inhabitants were not at home.
Ben-Uliel then proceeded to the Dawabsheh house and threw a second petrol bomb through the bedroom window where the couple and their two children were sleeping, before escaping.
Ben-Uliel belonged to a movement known as the "hilltop youth", a leaderless group of young Jewish settlers who set up unauthorised outposts, usually clusters of trailers, on West Bank hilltops - land the Palestinians want for their hoped-for state.
A second, underaged defendant in the case entered a plea deal last year in which murder charges against him were reduced to conspiracy charges.
Ben-Uliel said Israeli investigators forced him to make a false confession to the attack.
Libya has been split into rival camps with parallel institutions in the east and west since 2014. (photo: Abdullah Doma/AFP)
Protesters Set Government Building on Fire in Eastern Libya
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Protesters set fire to the eastern-based government's headquarters in the Libyan city of Benghazi, as rare demonstrations over living conditions and corruption continued in the east of the country for a third day."
The protests late on Saturday also erupted in al-Bayda, in Sabha in the south, and for the first time in al-Marj, a stronghold of eastern-based renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, witnesses said.
Libya has been split into rival camps with parallel institutions in the east and the west since 2014.
Eastern Libya and much of the south is controlled by Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), which is aligned with a government and a rump parliament also based in the east.
A 14-month offensive by the LNA to take control of the capital, Tripoli, from the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) crumbled in June, weakening Haftar.
Several hundred protesters turned out in the eastern towns to demonstrate against the political elite and over deteriorating living conditions that include lengthy power cuts and a severe banking crisis.
Similar protests broke out in late August in western Libya, where a new demonstration was planned for Sunday.
In Benghazi, the protesters - some armed with guns - set fire to the government building, leaving its white facade charred black, according to witnesses and pictures posted on social media. The fire was later brought under control.
The building was constructed after the LNA took control of Benghazi in 2017 after a campaign that left parts of the port city in ruins.
The economic crisis across Libya and power cuts in the east have been worsened by a blockade of most of the country's oil facilities imposed by the LNA and its supporters since January.
The United States said on Saturday Haftar had agreed to end the blockade, but sources in eastern Libya said negotiations were continuing.
Tripoli protests
Meanwhile, on Sunday, hundreds of protesters also gathered in Tripoli to decry poor living conditions and demand political reforms in Libya.
Standing outside the headquarters of the Presidential Council, the demonstrators raised placards calling for long-delayed elections to be held, witnesses said.
They denounced the turbulent transitional period that has dragged on in the country since a 2011 armed revolt toppled long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Some organisers of Sunday's rally condemned frequent power outages and short water supplies while addressing the demonstrators, who turned out following an online call to protest, the witnesses said.
The speakers also rejected recent decisions made by the Presidential Council, headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, including to appoint Mohammed Bayou, regarded as a loyalist of Haftar, as head of a newly created state media body.
This Weekend in Politics, Bulletin 441.
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