We're pausing our coverage of the US election for a few hours. Join us later for more updates and analysis. In the mean time, here is some light reading:

• Harris started 'like a rocket' in Michigan. Now she's slipping

• Check what the latest polls are saying
• US election 2024: A really simple guide to the presidential vote
• Seven swing states set to decide the 2024 US election
• Sign up the US Election Unspun newsletter here

Image source, EPA

Come November, American voters will elect not just their 47th president but also decide the future of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate are up for election on 5 November. The two major parties currently split control of Congress, with Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives and Democrats holding the Senate, both by narrow margins.

Who wins this race will dictate much of what the new president is able to do in power.

A waitress, a mechanic and a Nascar driver are among those trying to get elected - you can learn more about them and the wider race here.

Did Trump really build hundreds of miles of border wall?published at 06:38 British Summer Time 16 October 2024

06:38 BST 16 October 2024

By Jake Horton

During an interview with Bloomberg in Chicago on Tuesday, Donald Trump claimed he "built hundreds of miles of wall" along the US-Mexico border when he was president.

This claim needs more context. The length of border wall built during Trump's presidency depends on what you are measuring.

If you include new sections as well as parts that have been replaced or reinforced, then the figure is 450 miles. A report by US Customs and Border Protection, external puts the total at 458 miles.

However, only 85 miles of entirely new sections of wall were built under Trump - the rest was replaced or improved.

If you're just joining our live coverage of the US election, here are the latest developments you need to know about:

• Early voting began in Georgia, one of the key swing states which will decide who enters the White House
• A judge in the state blocked a move to mandate hand-counting for ballot papers, which was backed by Trump supporters
• Trump held a rally in Georgia on Tuesday evening, where he called on supporters to deliver a victory "too big to rig", a reference to his unfounded allegations about electoral fraud in 2020
• Elsewhere, Kamala Harris fleshed out her pitch to black voters, after polls indicated Trump is making inroads with the group
• Her running mate Tim Walz and President Joe Biden were in Pennsylvania, another state which could determine the election
• Campaign filings show Elon Musk has donated $75m in recent months to the pro-Donald Trump campaign group he set up
• You can see what the latest polls are saying by checking our tracker

Madeline Halpert
US reporter

Image source, Reuters

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July, Democratic activist Marcie Paul was hopeful, as she saw the vice-president go “off like a rocket” in Michigan.

The state is one of three "blue wall" states - along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - that went Democrat in 2020, and if won again, would help clinch a presidential victory for Harris.

But with less than a month to go before election day, Harris’s honeymoon period in Michigan could be ending, leaving her pathway to victory less certain.

We've been on the ground in the pivotal swing state finding out why.

Nada Tawfik
Reporting from Georgia

While election day isn't until 5 November, early voting has already started in Georgia - and record numbers have turned out, according to officials.

The BBC's Nada Tawfik spoke to residents after they cast their votes in the city of Savannah - you can watch above.

Millions of American choose to vote early, rather than wait for election day. They cast their votes either in person at voting sites, or through the mail. Each state has different rules around voting.

In 2016, more than 58 million ballots were cast ahead of the election.

Four years later, that figure ballooned to over 101 million after states changed rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Image source, Reuters

Elon Musk gave around $75m to his pro-Donald Trump campaign group America PAC over a three-month period, federal disclosures show.

Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla, SpaceX and social media site X, formally endorsed Trump in July after the Republican candidate survived an assassination attempt.

The billionaire also joined him on stage at the beginning of the month in Pennsylvania, when the former president returned to the site in Butler where the attempt was made on his life.

Image source, Getty Images

While Kamala Harris was in Detroit in Tuesday, other Democratic big hitters were in Pennsylvania.

Harris's vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz was in the west of the state aiming to woo rural voters.

The governor of Minnesota wore a plaid flannel jacket and a camouflage cap as he discussed his party's plan to expand internet access, among other policies.

President Joe Biden also spoke in Pennsylvania earlier on Tuesday. He told a Democrat party event that Harris would "cut her own path" as president if she succeeds him.

Both the Democratic and Republican campaigns are targeting resources at Pennsylvania, which is likely to prove to be one of the closest and most pivotal states in this election.

Image source, EPA

A judge in the US state of Georgia has temporarily blocked a planned hand count of ballots on election night, ruling that the last-minute change would create "administrative chaos".

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney halted the state election board's hand-count requirement on Tuesday, citing concerns that poll workers had not been adequately trained to handle millions of ballots under the new rules.

The hand count requirement was passed by the State Election Board in a 3-2 vote, supported by allies of Donald Trump. The former president and his supporters made unfounded allegations of election fraud in the state following the 2020 election.

Democrats welcomed the latest ruling, with representatives from Kamala Harris's campaign, saying that the rule was "an attempt to delay results and sow doubt in the outcome".

The decision comes amid ongoing early voting in Georgia, a critical battleground state in the 2024 election. Officials there say record numbers of voters turned out on Tuesday to cast their votes.

Image source, Getty Images

We've just heard more from Donald Trump's final rally of the day in Atlanta, Georgia, where he calls for "the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer".

He has recently called to expand the federal death penalty to apply, for instance, to people found guilty of trafficking women and children.

Nearly half of US states ban the death penalty, and although the federal death penalty exists, it is very rarely used, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Trump has focused much of his campaign on what he calls "migrant crime". He has claimed that Harris personally allowed migrants into the US who committed murder, and that she has fuelled an "invasion" that threatens to "destroy" the US.

He ended the rally by calling on his supporters to "fight, fight, fight" and for voters in Georgia to deliver a winning margin that is "too big to rig", a reference to his unsubstantiated claims about election interference during the 2020 election.

And with that, he leaves the stage.

Image source, Reuters

Earlier today, Kamala Harris dropped by the Cred Cafe in Detroit while campaigning in Michigan.

She addressed supporters, who were there to listen in on her interview with popular iHeart Radio host Charlamagne Tha God.

Image source, Reuters

"We will frack, frack, frack, and drill, baby, drill," Trump declares at his rally in Atlanta, as the crowd cheers.

He says Harris changed her position on fracking. During her campaign for president in 2019, she said she was against energy extraction through fracking - but has since made supportive comments about it as a means to reduce reliance on foreign energy.

"I will cut your energy prices in half within 12 months," Trump says, as the crowd roars.

"Because we have liquid gold, nobody else has it," he says referring to natural gas and oil.

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump has just got on stage for his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is currently talking about energy prices.

The former president began by telling people to return their early-voting ballots "as soon as possible", and said if he loses in November, "we will lose this country".

Image source, EPA

We've just received some remarks Donald Trump made during a pre-recorded town hall conversation with conservative network Fox News on Wednesday, where he answered questions from an all-women audience.

During the taping, Trump repeated claims that his Democratic opponents are "very dangerous" and "enemies from within". He describes them as "Marxists and communists and fascists and they're sick," according to the BBC's US news partner CBS.

The former president made headlines over the weekend when he appeared to suggest in a separate Fox interview the military could be used against "the enemy from within" the US, including "radical left lunatics."

Outside adversaries such as China and Russia can all be "handled", Trump told the town hall audience, but "the Pelosis, these people" are "so sick and they're so evil", he said, referring to former US House Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

Trump pushed back on accusations he had been trying to intimidate some Americans, saying: "I'm not threatening anybody. They're the ones doing the threatening."

The full town hall event with Trump will air on the network at 11:00 ET on Wednesday.

Gordon Corera
Security correspondent, reporting from Washington DC

Image source, EPA

The Middle East crisis has posed many difficult challenges for the Biden administration, primarily diplomatic but also political.

The latter are hard to ignore with an election only weeks away.

There are those on the left who have been unhappy that the Biden administration has not taken a tougher and more critical line against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, with talk that this could dampen Democratic turnout from some communities and age groups in what promises to be a tight election.

A letter sent to the Israeli government earlier warning the US could curtail military support if Gaza aid is not increased may help signal that the White House is taking a more assertive line when it comes to humanitarian issues - even as Washington continues to support Israel, especially over its confrontation with Hezbollah and Iran.

The key issue is whether there will be any consequences if Israel fails to comply with the demands, including perhaps limiting military aid.

That could be a fraught issue in Washington and promises to be politically sensitive - and crucially, the deadline of thirty days means it will come after votes have been cast in November’s election.

Kayla Epstein
US reporter

As we've been reporting all day, early voting has begun in the key state of Georgia.

A local judge there has ruled that the Georgia election results must be certified by the state deadline and that county officials do not have the authority to delay based on suspicion of fraud.

The ruling is based on a case brought by a Republican on the Fulton County board of elections, Julie Adams, arguing she had the right to refuse to certify election results.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney rejected that argument.

"If election superintendents were, as plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so - because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud - refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced," he wrote. "Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen."

Republican allies of Donald Trump in Georgia have sought to bolster the authority of county officials to certify or delay election results, efforts that have faced bipartisan criticism and pushback from Georgia's top election official, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The Harris campaign praised the ruling on Tuesday.

This year, the deadline for Georgia's counties to certify their results is 12 November, a week after the general election.

Nada Tawfik
Reporting from Georgia

Image source, Nada Tawfik / Georgia

Part of Kamala Harris's final campaign push has been about trying to win support from black men. I talked to several while out meeting voters in Georgia today.

I came across Kajuan Worthy playing basketball with his girlfriend Derika Lambert in Forsyth Park in Savannah's historic district.

Just like John Pierre in the recording studio whose story we brought you earlier, 22-year-old African American Worthy tells me his family is leaning towards voting for Vice-President Kamala Harris, but as of now he isn't going to vote because he isn't impressed with either presidential candidate.

He said he's tired of the "he said, she said" mudslinging of the campaign, and sees good and bad with both candidates.

Harris has been vice-president for a long time, he tells me, so he's confused why the things she's promised didn't get done while she was in office.

At the same time, he also gives former President Donald Trump mixed reviews.

I got a very different perspective from 79-year-old Albert Brunson, who was out walking with his grandson.

He says the country needs change and that Kamala Harris can deliver that. I ask him what he's hearing from the community, given fears that African American men might not turn out for Harris as they did for Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates previously.

"A lot of guys don't feel like a female is ready to be that powerful - I don't" feel that, he said, "She is smart, she knows how to talk, she knows what she's talking about, I think she'd make a good leader."

Bernd Debusmann Jr & Brandon Drenon
Reporting from Washington DC

We've just heard a lot from Kamala Harris on how she plans to win over black voters, but recent polls suggest she's losing ground among black voters - especially black men - in comparison to other Democratic candidates. And that Republican rival Donald Trump is having success in winning over black and Latino voters, a continuation of gains he made in 2016 and 2020.

One New York Times and Siena poll indicated Harris had 78% support among black voters, compared to around 90% support for Democrats in recent elections, with men accounting for most of this drop-off.

One issue driving this change could be the economy, which is a top concern for voters across demographics. That New York Times polls suggests a sizable majority of black and Latino voters are dissatisfied with the current state of the American economy.

"Inflation has pretty much made it impossible, or extremely challenging, for people to provide basic necessities for their families," says Quenton Jordan, a 30-year-old Virginia resident who once voted for Barack Obama but has supported Trump since 2016.

• Read more about the issues motivating some black and Latino voters to turn out for Trump

Over the course of her one-hour interview, Vice-President Kamala Harris touched on several key campaign messages as she expands her pitch to black men, who polls suggest may be drifting to Donald Trump.

• Harris hit back at claims that she's a "scripted" politician, saying that she repeats many of her campaign talking points because she is "disciplined" about getting her message out
• She asked listeners, including black people, to think of their loved ones who died during the Covid pandemic, and repeated a disputed allegation that Donald Trump sent test kits to Vladimir Putin in Russia at a time when they were urgently needed in the US
• She denied Trump's claims that she does not have the interests of black Americans at heart, calling him "full of mis- and disinformation"
• She said her policies of homeownership assistance could help black families build generational wealth
• She claimed that Trump would institute policies that would harm black Americans, and pushed back against his claims that she was a "border tsar" who failed to secure the US southern border during her time as vice-president
• The interview cut off abruptly right around 18:00 ET (23:00 BST) - possibly because the programme was running over its allotted time

Kamala Harris's interview on The Breakfast Club has come to an abrupt end with music now playing on the station instead.

We can't say for sure what happened but it's likely due to the programme running slightly behind schedule.

Stay tuned for a round-up of the key points we heard - plus a look at why the vice-president is ramping up efforts to court black and Latino voters.