How many US prisoners have had transgender surgery?published at 00:45 British Summer Time 17 October

00:45 BST 17 October

By Lucy Gilder

Earlier in her Fox News interview, Kamala Harris was pressed on her position on transgender surgery for prisoners.

She spoke out in favour of this in 2019, when running to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

In today’s interview, she said: “I follow the law”.

So, what do we know about how many prisoners have had this type of surgery?

People who identify as transgender make up about 1% of the total US federal prison population (158,892) as of October 2024, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, external (FBP).

BBC Verify asked the Bureau how many of them have had transgender surgery. The FBP said two of the 2,261 inmates had this treatment in federal custody - the first in 2022 and the second in 2023.

Image source, Reuters

We're beginning to see reaction to Kamala Harris's interview on Fox News - including from her presidential opponent, Donald Trump, who was fast to post on his Truth Social platform.

"KAMALA WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING", the post reads, with a campaign ad of his that claims Harris would continue Joe Biden policies.

Trump's running mate JD Vance had a different response, saying: "To my Democratic friends: maybe you should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden."

And in a statement, the Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt describes the interview as "a TRAIN WRECK". She adds: "Kamala can’t handle the pressure of an interview with Fox News - she certainly can’t handle the pressure of being President of the United States."

In such a tight race, Harris will hope her performance moves the dialpublished at 00:11 British Summer Time 17 October

00:11 BST 17 October

Rowan Bridge
North America correspondent

Kamala Harris was repeatedly pressed on what are seen as some of her weakest points.

Around a third of the Fox News interview was spent on the issue of immigration, with host Bret Baier repeatedly pressing her on the Biden administration's policies.

Harris' approach was largely the same whatever was asked - to shift the focus away from her and on to Donald Trump and what she sees as his unsuitability for high office.

Fox viewers don't normally hear the former president described as "misguided" or "unstable" on their airwaves.

How much the interview will convince any Republican voters unsure about Trump is an open question - but the Harris campaign will be hoping it has some impact.

In an election where the outcome may come down to tens of thousands of votes in each of seven key states, anything that moves the dial could prove critical come 5 November.

Fact-checking what Harris has said about gender surgery for prisonerspublished at 23:59 British Summer Time 16 October

23:59 BST 16 October

By Lucy Gilder

Harris was asked on Fox News about her past comments on transgender surgery for prisoners.

The network ran a Trump campaign ad which featured a 2019 interview where Harris spoke about her time as attorney general for California.

In that interview, she said she “made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desire and need”.

She has expressed support for gender surgery for prisoners on another occasion.

It comes after a questionnaire, drawn up by a civil rights group, was sent in 2019, external to all candidates to be the Democratic presidential nominee - one of the questions was whether they would use their authority as president to ensure that transgender people in prison and immigration detention would have access to "treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care".

Harris crossed the box which said “yes”.

But the Harris campaign has said this “is not what she is proposing or running on” in this election.

Does Harris support decriminalising illegal immigration?published at 23:54 British Summer Time 16 October

23:54 BST 16 October

By Jake Horton

During her interview with Fox News, Kamala Harris was asked if she supported decriminalising illegal immigration, and if she had changed her stance on that issue.

She said it is not her current policy and her position is that unauthorised border crossings are illegal. However, she has expressed support in the past for decriminalising illegal border crossings.

During her unsuccessful run to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2019, Harris was among the Democrats who raised their hands during a debate when asked if they thought “it should be a civil offense rather than a crime to cross the border without documentation.”

When asked about this afterwards, she said: “I’m not in favour of decriminalising or not having consequence for, let me be very clear, we have to have a secure border, but I am in favour of saying that we’re not going to treat people who are undocumented cross the border as criminals, that is correct.”

When pressed on the issue, she clarified: “I would not make it a crime punishable by jail. It should be a civil enforcement issue but not a criminal enforcement issue.”

A Harris campaign adviser told the BBC that her current positions have been "shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden-Harris administration."

Several times during the Fox interview, host Bret Baier and Kamala Harris have descended into talking over one another - including towards its close.

Asked about recent comments made on the 60 Minutes programme, in which Harris claimed Iran was the greatest threat to the US, she pushes back that she would like to "have a conversation that is grounded in full assessment of the facts".

"I think this interview is supposed to be about the choices that your viewers should be presented about this election," she says.

Baier ends by asking what she would tell people who do not feel they know her. Harris says anyone unsure of who she is, or what she represents, should visit her official website and read her policy proposals.

Stay tuned for some fact-checking from BBC Verify and analysis from our correspondent Rowan Bridge.

As the interview nears an end, Fox's Bret Baier segues from Harris's remarks on Trump's fitness for office to a question on whether she noticed that Joe Biden was in a diminished mental state long before he dropped out of the presidential race.

Harris says Biden has shown the right judgment and experience in office, whether in the Oval Office or the Situation Room.

She reverts to an attack on Trump, saying that she believes the American people are far more concerned about the idea of him as president.

Biden is not on the ballot this year, she adds.

Kamala Harris, appearing in her first Fox News interview, is questioned about why her campaign promises to turn the page when she's the vice-president of the sitting administration.

Shown a video clip of her saying last week that there's "not a thing" she would change about the actions of the Biden administration, she says: "Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency" - but didn't elaborate further.

Arguing that Americans are exhausted with the Donald Trump era of politics, Fox's Baier asks why Trump has so much support in that case and whether she thinks voters are "stupid" or "misinformed".

"I would never say that about the American people. He's [Trump's] the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people," Harris says - adding that Trump refers to his political opponents as "the enemy within".

• A point of comparison: In 2016, during her run for the presidency, Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton called half of Donald Trump's supporters a "basket of deplorables" and said they were "racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it". She apologised the next day, with Trump calling her remarks "insulting to ... millions of amazing, hardworking people".

The conversation moves on to transgender surgery, with Fox's Bret Baier playing a clip in which Kamala Harris said during her 2020 presidential primary run that she would allow transgender inmates in prison to get gender reassignment surgery.

Baier asks if she would, as president, advocate for taxpayer dollars to be used to that end.

"I will follow the law," she says repeatedly.

When pressed for more details, she repeats herself and adds that Donald Trump also followed this same law when he was in office.

• Just so you know: Our colleagues at BBC Verify are looking into this exchange, and we'll bring you their analysis when it's ready.

Harris is played a clip of a mother whose 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn Nungaray, was killed by a migrant who illegally crossed the border into the US and was released from detention.

She says she is "so sorry" for what Nungaray's family has gone through.

Asked to defend her administration's early decision to reverse some of Trump's restrictive policies, she says Trump told Republicans to reject a bipartisan immigration bill because "he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem".

We're straight into one of the biggest issues of this election - immigration - which is considered one of Kamala Harris's weaker points among voters.

Fox News host Bret Baier notes that 6,000,000 undocumented migrants have been allowed into the country under the Biden-Harris administration and asks if she regrets pulling back from Trump-era policies that suppressed migrant crossings.

Harris does not answer directly - she begins to say that one of the administration's first legislative proposals was an immigration bill, but Baier interrupts and their exchange quickly grows tense.

The Democrat says several times that she'd like to finish her answer, insisting "our priority has been on fixing the problem". Harris also blames her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, for obstructing a bipartisan immigration bill nine months ago because "he preferred to run [his presidential campaign] on a problem rather than fixing a problem".

• Get up to speed with how many migrants have crossed the US border illegally

Sam Hancock
Live page editor, in Washington DC

In a few minutes, Kamala Harris will be on Fox News for her first sit-down with the conservative news network.

It's a big moment in her campaign and comes after she faced criticism over a lack of media appearances throughout her bid to be president - though she has since turned that around with interviews on a multitude of programmes, radio shows and podcasts.

Myself and the DC team will bring you key news lines from the interview - and our colleagues at BBC Verify are on hand to fact-check any claims Harris may make.

Sam Cabral
Reporting from Washington

Image source, Getty Images

Kamala Harris will make her first appearance on Fox News later today after sitting down for an interview with the right-leaning cable network's anchor Bret Baier.

Baier, 54, is Fox's chief political anchor and hosts "Special Report with Bret Baier", a daily hour-long weekday programme that airs at 1800ET (2200 GMT) and draws more than two million viewers on average.

Formerly the network's chief White House correspondent as well as its Pentagon correspondent, Baier signs off his shows every night with a slogan of “fair, balanced and unafraid”, and he has long positioned himself as a straight news man averse to mixing it up with Fox's more entertainment-focused primetime presenters.

That has often made Baier a target of the channel's vocally pro-Trump viewership and he has sometimes appeared keen to appease that segment of Fox's sizeable audience.

The interview will be pre-taped and will air, according to Baier, "unedited, uninterrupted, without commercial breaks for the first half of Special Report". He has also assured viewers Harris will not receive any questions or guidance ahead of time.

But that has not stopped critics and doubters from speaking out, with Donald Trump complaining: "I would have preferred seeing a more hard hitting journalist, but Fox has grown so weak and soft on the Democrats."

A gaffe on Fox News could be damaging - but that's a risk Harris is willing to takepublished at 22:20 British Summer Time 16 October

22:20 BST 16 October

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

With less than three weeks remaining before election day, Kamala Harris is beginning to dip her toes into hostile territory.

This afternoon, she's sitting for an interview with Fox News presenter Bret Baier - her first appearance on a cable network that is home to many of her most vocal media critics. There are also reports that the vice-president is considering a sit-down with Joe Rogan, whose irreverent podcast is immensely popular with younger men and many conservatives.

While Harris has spent much of her abbreviated presidential campaign keeping the media at arm’s length, her team may be concluding that in her final pitch she needs to reach out to a broader swath of voters.

Public opinion surveys show that a majority of male voters are backing Donald Trump and that this 'gender gap' is even eating into her core electoral coalition, including younger voters, black people and Hispanics.

And in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, Harris is relying on the support of independents and some Republicans in suburban communities around major cities if she wants to offset Trump’s gains among traditionally Democratic working-class and union voters.

Her appearance on Fox comes with risks, as a verbal stumble or miscue now could derail her during the campaign’s home stretch. Whether borne of political calculation or desperation, however, it appears to be a risk Democrats are now ready to take.

Image source, Reuters

On a day in which Kamala Harris is set to appear on the conservative network Fox News, she also addressed voters in swing state Pennsylvania flanked by what she called "over 100 Republican leaders... who are supporting my candidacy".

The vice-president spoke in the city of Washington Crossing - near where George Washington is said to have crossed the Delaware River as a general during the American Revolution.

She claimed that America's democratic ideals are at stake in the 2024 election, urging voters to "put country over party" like the Republicans on stage with her and vote against Donald Trump.

The Democratic nominee said Trump "violated the oath to uphold the constitution of the United States" - referring to his untrue claims he actually won the 2020 election - and would "violate it again".

"To people from across Pennsylvania and across our nation, let us together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals, and for the constitution", she said.

Image source, Getty Images

Nearly 30 million people cast their ballots before election day in 2020.

Early voting - which allows people to vote in-person or by mail before election day - has previously favoured the Democratic Party. Democratic voters tend to participate in mail-in voting in higher rates, also known as casting an absentee ballot.

When Joe Biden won the last presidential election, his opponent Donald Trump subsequently spread claims that early voting measures had been manipulated in various ways.

He and some of his Republican allies claimed mail-in voting was ripe with fraud. Numerous national and state-level studies have shown that although there have been isolated cases, electoral fraud is very rare.

In the 2024 election, Republicans are trying to encourage more early-voting and mail-in voting.

Many US states have begun early voting in the 2024 presidential election and it's off to a rapid start - just look at our last post on the figures coming out of Georgia.

Turnout for early voting in the swing state of Georgia has been breaking records, as we've been reporting since it opened yesterday.

Figures released a short while ago by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office indicate that more than 450,000 residents - or more than 6% of the state's seven million active voters - have so far cast ballots either in person at polling sites or by mail as absentees.

Raffensperger says his state is "at the top for election integrity and voter convenience" and voters "came out in record numbers because they know Georgia’s voting system is secure, efficient, and accurate".

• For context: Georgia was under the spotlight at the last election in 2020, when five million votes in total were cast and Democrat Joe Biden won the state by just under 12,000. Donald Trump refused to accept the result and a phone call recording revealed he had told Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes". The former president has been charged on eight counts with unlawfully trying to change the outcome, which he denies.

Rachel Looker
US reporter

I'm continuing to speak to voters from some of the key battleground states about what it's like to live there during an election.

Joseph Takacs, 47, from Michigan, says he sees his vote as a "drop in the bucket" on election day, and plans on reluctantly backing Donald Trump.

"I live in a rural area, so it's very, very Trumpy up here."

Meanwhile, 36-year-old Jason Bowen, from Pennsylvania, says he plans to vote for Kamala Harris despite living in a rural area with a lot of visible Trump support.

"We're potentially playing kingmaker here," he says.

"It is kind of nerve-wracking knowing that we're going to play such a big role because there's a lot of people that are just so burnt out about everything."

In our coverage of the US election, we're consistently referring to swing or battleground states and their importance.

In case you're wondering what those terms mean - here's a reminder.

About 240 million people are eligible to vote in this presidential election, but only a relatively small number of them are likely to settle the question of who becomes the next president.

Experts believe there are only a handful of states - the swings and battlegrounds - that could plausibly be won by either the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump: North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Both parties are therefore campaigning intensively to win over undecided voters in these states - and the graph below shows their latest polling data:

As we've been reporting, some people have already cast their ballots in several US states, with in-person early voting due to begin in the key swing state of North Carolina tomorrow.

But the process could hit snags as election day gets nearer.

The state is one of seven crucial battlegrounds that experts say could tilt this election - and it's still reeling from Hurricane Helene which tore through it at the end of last month.

In Buncombe County, one of the hardest-hit areas where dozens were killed, several buildings were destroyed, including planned polling locations.

The county's Democratic chair, Kathie Kline, has told Politico she's worried about the storm's effect on her party's chances: "I am very concerned that North Carolina could lose. We were feeling pretty confident we were going to turn blue this year, but because of the storm we're less convinced that we're going to have that positive impact at the polls."

Image source, Getty Images