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    'Truth and lies have eroded': why an artist took over a billboard at the US-Mexico border

    The artist Stefan Brüggemann woke up at his London apartment last Wednesday to Donald Trump declaring he had won the presidency. It was, of course, a lie. “The second I turned on YouTube, I saw him and Mike Pence declare victory,” Brüggemann says.It was a moment that epitomized the political climate in which the Mexican-German artist had launched his latest project, which tackles the interchangeability of fact and deception. On the day of the US election Brüggemann unveiled two neon words – “Truth” and “Lie” – perched on a billboard at the US Mexico border.At six feet height and beaming in red, white and blue, Truth/Lie can be read in two ways. When viewed from San Diego towards Tijuana, Baja California, it spells “TRUTH”; when viewed from Mexico, the word “LIE” is framed against the backdrop of a mountainous American landscape.Brüggemann, whose career spans several decades, seeks to highlight how the meaning of two seemingly straightforward words has been diluted in an era of political polarization and ideological chaos. More

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    Why Democrats lost Latino voters along Texas border: 'They relied on loyalty'

    While Democrats aggressively pushed to turn Texas blue this election cycle, they were banking on help from people like Barbara Ocañas, a highly educated, 37-year-old Latina voter from the Rio Grande valley.
    But, after Donald Trump faced backlash for using the word “coyote” to describe human smugglers, Ocañas was turned off by liberals focused more on semantics than the actual realities of the migrant crisis affecting her home. As the daughter of a Mexican émigré, she believes that undocumented immigrants are “just people, like you and me”.
    However, when it comes to earning US citizenship, “there is a right way and a wrong way to do it”, she said.
    She also fears what Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s administration could mean for people she knows who rely on jobs in refineries or hauling crude oil. So, faced with a ballot and a choice, Ocañas decided she preferred four more years with Donald Trump in the White House.
    “Not all of us take it to heart when we’re called rapists and bad hombres,” she said. “We have tough skin.”
    In Texas border towns with chronically low voter participation, residents did actually show up to the polls this election, exceeding county turnouts from 2016. But when results rolled in Tuesday night, Biden’s overall success was nowhere near Hillary Clinton’s slam dunk four years earlier, revealing Democratic vulnerabilities among a key bloc whose votes had largely been taken for granted.
    “Democrats have just assumed and relied on this historical loyalty by people in the valley to the Democratic party,” said Natasha Altema McNeely, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “And that assumption, I think, is very dangerous for the Democrats if they expect to continue to help the valley remain blue.”
    Biden still won Ocañas’s Hidalgo county, but with a fraction of the margin. In Starr county, which Clinton had dominated in a 60-point landslide, voters swung for Biden by just five points. And, after Democrats squandered a nearly 33-point advantage from four years ago, Zapata county flipped to deliver Trump a stunning victory.
    That erosion of Democratic support took place even after high-profile Biden surrogates descended on the US-Mexico border ahead of election day. Jill Biden, Joe’s wife, campaigned in El Paso on the first day of early voting, when – amid buzz that Texas might be in play – she told her audience that a win in the state would mean that “we are unstoppable”. More

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    Trump v Biden: the key moments of the final presidential debate – video highlights

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump have gone head-to-head for the last time before the US election on 3 November in the final television debate, helped by a mute button on the candidates’ microphones that prevented interruptions.
    Squaring off in Nashville, Biden had to field aggressive questioning about his son’s business dealings and when Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, the challenger branded his opponent ‘one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history’. Here is a look back at the key moments
    The final presidential debate – as it happened
    Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video
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    'Children brought here by coyotes': Trump squares off with Biden on immigration – video

    Donald Trump and Joe Biden have squared off over immigration policies, including the US government being unable to locate the parents of more than 500 immigrant children. ‘Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had,’ Trump said. The president also criticised immigration under the previous Obama-Biden administration, including the catch and release policy, saying ‘those with the lowest IQ’ were the only ones who returned for an immigration hearing
    Biden the winner of final debate, TV viewers and undecided voters say
    Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video More

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    Trump considers blocking Americans who may have Covid-19 from coming home

    The Trump administration is reportedly considering a measure to block US citizens and permanent residents from returning home if they are suspected of being infected with coronavirus.A senior US official told Reuters that draft regulation, which has not been finalized and could change, would give the government authorization to block individuals who could “reasonably” be believed to have contracted Covid-19 or other diseases.Donald Trump has instituted a series of sweeping immigration restrictions since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, suspending some legal immigration and allowing US border authorities to rapidly deport migrants caught at the border without standard legal processes.Reuters reported in May that US government officials were concerned that dual US-Mexico citizens might flee to the United States if the coronavirus outbreak in Mexico worsened, putting more stress on US hospitals.The draft regulation, which was first reported by the New York Times on Monday, would be issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has played a lead role in the pandemic response, the senior official told Reuters.“Federal agencies have been asked to submit feedback on the proposal to the White House by Tuesday, though it is unclear when it might be approved or announced,” the Times reported.A Trump pandemic task force was not expected to act on the proposal this week, although that timeline could change, the official said. More