Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Kalamazoo, Michigan

Image source, Bernd Debusmann Jr / BBC

For journalists, covering the campaign trail can be a time-consuming affair. Media "pre-sets" - where we set up cameras - often take place many hours before the actual events.

This morning, for example, I arrived at the venue at 06:30 local time, well ahead of today's rally at around 16:00.

It was a bit of a surprise then, when I found a solitary rally-goer standing in the cold, dark Michigan morning: 25-year-old Matt Jansen.

Jansen lives in St Louis, Missouri, and drove nearly seven hours overnight after leaving work on Friday to see Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama here today.

"Harris rallies look awesome, like a party," says Jansen, who runs a politics-focused TikTok. "It was on the bucket list."

"I'm just here to share the enthusiasm and be part of the movement that's happening," he adds. "And to see Michelle Obama."

Jansen has a long list of issues that matter to him in this election, But the most pressing, he says, is abortion rights.

"I am terrified for women. I don't know how we can call ourselves a great, free country, when you're taking away half of the population's rights," he explains. "It blows my mind."

"If I decide to have kids, and my wife and I have any problems, what's going to happen?" Jansen adds. "Trump wants to roll us back. I don't want that."

At a rally in Houston, Texas, last night Beyoncé endorsed Kamala Harris.

The Texas Hold 'Em singer said she wasn't there as a celebrity or a politician, but as a "mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies".

She told the crowd it was time to "sing a new song" while urging them to back Harris.

Take a look:

Ana Faguy
Reporting from Washington DC

It's 10 days to go until election day, and the race couldn't be tighter - welcome back to our live US election coverage.

Last night, Kamala Harris appeared alongside singer Beyoncé at a rally in Houston, Texas.

Laying her cards down (down, down, down), Harris made her pitch to some 30,000 people gathered at the event, according to her campaign.

After Trump spoke at a rally in Traverse City, in the swing state of Michigan, last night, his highly-anticipated interview with podcaster Joe Rogan dropped.

During the three-hour long episode, Trump revealed his "biggest mistake" while in office was hiring "bad people or disloyal people" and named his former chief of staff John Kelly and former national security adviser John Bolton as examples.

Both men have been critical of Trump this election cycle and have advised against supporting a second Trump term.

On the penultimate weekend of the campaign, Harris and Trump are pitching to voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania - we'll have all the latest right here.

We're pausing our election coverage. Please follow developments and explore our US election cover on our website.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the day you may have missed:

• US officials believe cybercriminals linked to China may have attempted to tap into phones used by Trump and his running mate JD Vance.
• Donald Trump called the US "a garbage can for the rest of the world" as he took aim at the Biden-Harris policy on the Texas border.
• Kamala Harris reiterated a pledge to codify Roe v Wade to guarantee abortion rights. She is in Texas on Friday at a rally where Beyoncé will perform.

• Trump and Harris are continuing to stump across the US with Election Day just 11 days away. They remain neck and neck in recent polling.

The news that Israel's military is conducting "precise strikes on military targets in Iran" is breaking just as Harris and Trump are scheduled to appear on stage at campaign events this evening.

Harris is in Texas while Trump is in the swing state of Michigan, where the Mideast conflict is at the forefront of the minds of many Arab American voters.

Whoever wins the presidency will face significant foreign policy challenges in handling the situation overseas.

The candidates will be pressed to respond to the developing situation in Iran.

There are less than two weeks until Election Day and this may push foreign policy to the forefront in this final sprint.

As the US presidential candidates continue their campaigns, we have other breaking news to bring you.

Israel's military says they are conducting "precise strikes on military targets in Iran".

You can follow updates here.

Sam Cabral
US reporter

Image source, Getty Images

As we've been reporting Donald Trump is sitting down with America's number one podcaster, Joe Rogan, in an episode which is expected to drop on Saturday.

Rogan, a stand-up comedian and UFC commentator, boasts 14.5 million Spotify followers and YouTube subscribers. His show, The Joe Rogan Experience (or JRE for short), hosts multi-hour interviews with a diverse mix of guests - from astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones - and has built an enduring cultural footprint.

For the Trump campaign, which has cancelled some traditional media interviews in favour of appearances on podcasts with predominantly male audiences, JRE is the lynchpin of concerted outreach to young men who are racially diverse and not necessarily regular voters.

A Trump-Rogan collaboration once appeared improbable. The podcaster was once outspokenly liberal and endorsed Democrat Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. As recently as 2022, he said he did not want to "help" Trump electorally because he was "an existential threat to democracy".

But he spoke fondly of Trump on a recent show as a "wheeling, dealing billionaire character that everybody enjoyed", implying that he believed the Republican could better handle the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine than Democrat Kamala Harris.

• Read more: How Rogan became so popular and how Trump might acquit himself in their interview

Fact-checking Donald Trump’s latest claim about abortionpublished at 23:44 British Summer Time 25 October

23:44 BST 25 October

By Merlyn Thomas

Within the last few hours, Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social: “Kamala Harris is demanding late term abortion in 7, 8 and 9 and even execution after birth”.

He’s made the false claim about “execution after birth” before - in September’s presidential debate. Infanticide is illegal in all states across the US and Kamala Harris is not demanding this.

Trump hasn’t provided evidence for his claim but some Republicans have focused on an extremely rare section of medical law which refers to ‘born-alive infants’ – those born after an abortion or an attempted abortion.

These instances may occur in cases where a pregnancy may threaten the mother’s life or an infant develops foetal anomalies which mean the chances of their survival are unlikely – and they only live for a few minutes or hours after birth.

Doctors provide palliative care in these instances. Donald Wolthe, a maternal foetal doctor in Minnesota who specialises in such high-risk pregnancies, says they do this to make their last moments more comfortable and provide parents a chance to hold their baby and grieve.

Such cases are rare. For example, between 2019 and 2022, Minnesota recorded eight. None of the infants survived.

Nada Tawfik
Reporting from New York

Image source, EPA

Last year, I visited Amanda Zurawski at her home in Austin, Texas where she recounted how her life was put at risk by Texas’s abortion ban.

She took action, and Zurawski v. Texas became the first case to challenge a state’s abortion ban on behalf of women like her and obstetrician-gynaecologists.

What started with seven plaintiffs grew to 22. I caught up with her today ahead of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s rallies in Texas.

“Our lives are on the line this election, and we cannot afford to sit this one out or be complacent,” she tells me.

Amanda believes the political climate is changing, even in historically Republican states, because of all of the fears and concerns around abortion rights and points to the extremely tight senate race between the Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and his democratic challenger Colin Allred.

She tells me Harris’s rally in a red Texas sends a message that she will be president for every American, regardless of party.

This summer, Kamala Harris called her out of the blue to thank her for her fight and partnership. That meant a lot to Amanda, who feels that the fight for reproductive freedom is just as personal to Harris.

Holly Honderich

Next month’s election is the first presidential contest since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, rescinding the nationwide right to abortion.

Since that ruling, more than two years ago, abortion has proved to be a winning issue for Democrats, and a major liability for Republicans.

Most Americans support access to abortion, a broad base of support that has only grown as abortion bans have been enacted in Republican-controlled states. And a record-high - around 32% of US voters - say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion.

Kamala Harris knows this. Since launching her campaign, she has worked to tie Donald Trump to strict and unpopular abortion bans, hoping the widespread support for the procedure will help her at the polls in this extraordinarily close election.

Holly Honderich
US reporter

Instead of making a return trip to Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, or another crucial battleground state, Kamala Harris is in Texas, a state she has no hope of winning.

Why? In a deadlocked election, Harris is trying to make a splash that will resonate nationwide, by doubling down on perhaps her strongest argument.

Her Houston rally will focus on abortion - a winning issue for Democrats - in a state with one of the strictest bans in the country.

Since launching her campaign, Harris has used Texas’s near-total abortion ban as a cautionary tale of what reproductive rights look like under Republican leadership. If Trump were to win, Harris has argued, more and more of the country will have Texas-like bans, where physicians could face the death penalty for performing abortions.

Today, she will make that argument from inside Texas, hoping the widespread support for abortion access nationwide will help her at the ballot box next month.

Caitlin Wilson
US live editor

It's a somewhat unusual day in US presidential politics, with less than two weeks until the election, as both candidates campaign in Texas - a state in which there is very little question about who will win next month.

But the Lone Star State is politically valuable for Republicans and Democrats beyond its 40 Electoral College votes.

Donald Trump's visit today has focused on the US border with Mexico - a vast portion of which is located in Texas. He told a crowd in the capital Austin earlier that the United States is "like a garbage can... for the rest of the world to dump the people they don't want", continuing his attacks on Democrats' immigration policies. The former president also recorded a show with popular podcast host Joe Rogan while he was in town.

For Kamala Harris, the visit could give a boost to Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred, who is working to unseat prominent Republican Ted Cruz. Harris is also using her time to highlight her abortion policy proposals - focusing on a core issue of her campaign in a state with strict restrictions on the procedure. Plus, Houston is the hometown of Beyoncé, who is expected to appear at a pro-Harris rally later this evening.

Here's what else is on the docket for the evening:

• Tim Walz will be in Scranton, Pennsylvania for rally at around 18:00 EDT (23:00 BST)

• Former President Barack Obama is set to appear in Charlotte, North Carolina at approximately 19:15 EDT (00:15 BST)
• A Trump rally will be held in Michigan at around 19:30 EDT (00:30 BST)
• A rally in support of Kamala Harris will take place in Houston, Texas at approximately 21:00 EDT (01:00 BST). This is where Beyoncé is set to appear

We'll be bringing you updates and analysis from all of it, plus any news that develops in the meantime. Stick with us.

US authorities say cybercriminals linked to China may have attempted to tap into phones or networks used by Donald Trump and JD Vance, a number of sources familiar with the matter confirmed to the BBC's US news partner, CBS News.

The sources said the Trump-Vance campaign had been alerted to the fact that phones used by Trump and Vance may have been among the targets of a broader cyber attack.

People affiliated with the Harris-Walz campaign were also targeted, a person familiar with the situation confirmed to the BBC.

It is unclear how much information, if any, may have been compromised.

The Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment on whether candidates were targeted.

A joint statement, external from the FBI and the Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the US government was investigating the "unauthorised access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People's Republic of China".

We are still looking into the details of this story - you can read more about the potential attempted hacking here, where we will include any updates that become available.

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier, we started looking at each of the seven "swing" states that'll likely decide who wins on 5 November.

If you missed our look at Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, you can catch up here.

We're now bringing you key details on the remaining four states.

• Michigan: Michigan’s swing voters are frustrated by inflation and are typically “lower middle-class or working-class voters who just don't really pay attention to politics on a daily basis”, one expert says
• Arizona: Border politics is one of the top issues, as is abortion. Democrats are hoping a ballot measure enshrining the right to an abortion might help turnout in this historically Republican state
• Georgia:Experts say that Trump needs to keep the state’s sizeable Republican base together to win, while Harris must appeal to black voters in large numbers and maintain her support with younger voters and minority communities
• North Carolina: Trump has called it a “very, very big state to win”, and Democrats will be hoping to secure it after the Republicans won the state in 2020 with just over 70,000 votes.

The BBC's dedicated US election page is home to plenty of explainers made to help guide you through the next 11 days up to polling day.

They're there to help break down key parts of the process, delve deeper into the key battleground states and set out exactly what both Harris and Trump plan to do if they're elected.

We've compiled a few below, which can all be found by pressing on the links.

• A simple guide to the US 2024 presidential election
• Seven swing states set to decide the 2024 US election
• What is the US electoral college and how does it work?
• What are Harris and Trump's policies?
• US election polls: Who is ahead - Harris or Trump?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.

Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Trump has found a new attack line on illegal immigration, comparing America's reception of migrants to trash collection.

"We're like a garbage can... like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people they don't want," Trump told the crowd in Austin, Texas a short time ago.

He made the remark at an event last night as well, and earlier, Kamala Harris responded: "It’s just another example of how he really belittles our country.

"This is someone who is a former president of the United States, who has a bully pulpit, and this is how he uses it: to tell the rest of the world that somehow the United States of America is... trash."

Mike Wendling
US digital reporter

Authorities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania are investigating what they say are nearly 2,500 suspected voter registrations.

The registration forms were dropped off just before the state deadline to register to vote.

Authorities say they included incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names or names that did not match other government records.

Officials say one or two organisations conducting voter registration drives in the county were responsible, but did not name the groups or their affiliations.

In a statement this morning, county officials said the voting system is “secure” and that the investigation was proof that safeguards work.

“We will continue to operate with the highest levels of veracity, integrity, and transparency so that Lancaster County voters can be confident in our election,” the statement said.

For context: Lancaster County is west of Philadelphia and leans Republican. In 2020, Donald Trump won a sizeable victory there over Joe Biden. But Biden won enough votes elsewhere to narrowly win Pennsylvania, a swing state that is expected to again be very close in this election.

Image source, Reuters

As we've been reporting, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is in Austin to record an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the biggest podcast in the US.

A Trump campaign official says the interview is likely to be released tomorrow, the BBC's US partner CBS News reports.

The Trump campaign’s calculated media strategy has focused on podcasts popular with younger men over traditional media outlets.

• You can read more about Trump's appearance on the podcast here

Major papers say they won't endorse a candidate - but why?published at 20:32 British Summer Time 25 October

20:32 BST 25 October

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

Image source, EPA

What do the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have in common? Both are major American newspapers that have recently announced they would not be endorsing a candidate for president this year.

Both are also owned by billionaires - medical executive and investor Patrick Soon-Shiong in Los Angeles and Amazon head Jeff Bezos in Washington.

Soon-Shiong has acknowledged direct involvement in the editorial process that led to his paper’s decision not to endorse. There are unconfirmed reports that Bezos stepped in with the Washington Post, as well.

Both papers, it is also reported, were preparing to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris.

While senior leaders in both papers have said that the decision to break with longstanding tradition is not a judgement on the relative fitness and qualifications of the two candidates, many journalists and those on the left aren’t seeing it that way - particularly given that the announcements have come so close to election day.

Instead, they are accusing the papers of bending to the political - and corporate - interests of their deep-pocketed owners.

The Post’s publisher, William Lewis, explained that the paper would allow readers to “make up their own minds” - although he did not say why it would continue to endorse candidates for other political offices.

Newspapers - which used to dominate the American media landscape - have seen the influence of their editorials decline over recent years, along with their circulation and readership.

It is ironic, then, that the decisions not to endorse will probably generate more attention for the two papers, negative and positive, than any recent editorial they have published.