Mike Wendling
US reporter

Image source, BBC/Mike Wendling

Over the next few weeks the candidates will become very familiar with cheese curds and the Green Bay Packers – two of the most famous products of the battleground state of Wisconsin.

Located in the north-central US, the state went for Donald Trump in 2016 and for Joe Biden in 2020.

Kamala Harris visited yesterday in advance of an expected trip by Barack Obama and Tim Walz next week.

JD Vance will visit on Sunday, and both he and Donald Trump have been back several times since the Republican convention was held in the state’s biggest city, Milwaukee, in July.

Outside of its cities, Wisconsin includes large rural areas dotted with farms, small towns and rolling hills. But this election is testing the limits of the traditional friendly mindset known as “Midwestern nice”.

I recently spoke to election workers in the western part of the state – they’re worried that conspiracy theories about voting could make them targets on election day.

• Read more: ‘You stole the election’: Nervous volunteers onfront line of conspiracies

Gary O'Donoghue
Senior North America correspondent, reporting from Grand Rapids

Kamala Harris will be spending a lot of time in Michigan over the next 18 days.

This is one of those states that is crucial to the outcome of the election.

They call it part of the blue wall - those Midwestern states, manufacturing and industrial states that often vote as a block.

Whoever wins here will likely win the election, so Harris is engaging some super high-powered celebrities like Lizzo. Michelle Obama will also be here in the coming days.

The message is one about the economy, about investment in the automotive industry, about wages, about green jobs.

Harris herself will be 60 this coming weekend, but there's not going to be a lot of time for partying because there is a lot of work to do before Election Day.

Image source, Reuters

At her Grand Rapids rally, Kamala Harris questioned Donald Trump's fitness to be president, claiming he could be "ducking" media appearances because he is exhausted by campaigning.

"He has no plan for how he would address the needs of the American people," she tells the Michigan crowd.

"As we've seen, he is only focused on himself. And now he's ducking debates and cancelling interviews," she says, amid reports that Trump has withdrawn from at least three scheduled media interviews in the past week.

Harris continues: "His own campaign team recently said it is because of exhaustion."

"Well if you are too exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises tough questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world."

On Friday, Politico, external reported that a Trump campaign staff member had said the Republican candidate was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews, but that could change”.

Politico also quoted Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt in the same article, who told the outlet the exhaustion claim “is unequivocally false”.

Image source, Iona Hampson / BBC

Kamala Harris is now on stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's a key swing state in the election.

You can watch her speech live at the top of this page.

Gary O'Donoghue
Senior North America correspondent, reporting from Grand Rapids

I don't know what you call six governors at one time, but here in West Michigan, there are six on stage right now.

The whole blue wall in human terms is here; Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, Tony Evers from Wisconsin - but that's not enough for the Kamala Harris campaign.

We also have New York, Massachusetts and Maryland governors on stage at the one time.

It's a clear indication that this is, as Witmer puts it, Ground Zero in this election campaign.

Image source, Iona Hampson / BBC

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a crowd is waiting for Kamala Harris to appear.

We're live streaming the event, which you can watch at the top of this page.

Currently, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is on stage and talking.

She says Donald Trump's agenda is "the same old stuff". She is also praising Harris's economic plans.

Stick with us as we bring you the latest.

Image source, Getty Images

Kamala Harris fans aren't the only ones turning out early in Michigan to catch a glimpse of their pick for president (see our last post).

In Detroit, a couple of hours away from Grand Rapids, some of Donald Trump's supporters are already waiting to see him at a rally scheduled to begin at 17:00 ET (22:00 BST).

One could be seen wearing a giant foam cowboy hat, emblazoned with Trump's Make America Great Again slogan - used in his campaign.

Image source, Getty Images

Vice-President Kamala Harris is due to hold her first campaign event of the day in the next hour - in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

She and her presidential opponent are neck and neck in the swing state - with polling data suggesting Harris is currently ahead, but by less than one percentage point.

Hours before Harris's first stop, a snaking line was already forming.

Image source, Getty Images

Images we're seeing show that Pro pro-Palestinian protesters are also at the venue ahead of the presidential hopeful's arrival.

The war in Gaza is a key issue for voters in Michigan - the state has the largest proportion of Arab-Americans.

Image source, Getty Images

It's worth remembering that these new documents relate to one of Donald Trump's four criminal cases.

This one is about whether Trump illegally conspired to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden - for which he was charged with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US. Trump has denied wrongdoing and pled not guilty to all charges.

It doesn't look like the trial will happen anytime soon, and there's a strong chance some of the charges may not survive.

Could Trump go to prison? Penalties for the various charges range from a fine or up to 20 years in prison - or both. But there are logistical, security and political questions around whether Trump would actually serve time in jail even if convicted.

A conviction at trial would take the US into uncharted territory, like when Trump became the first former president in US history to be criminally convicted, having been found guilty of falsifying business records.

• Here's a handy guide to all four of Trump's criminal cases

As we've said already, a lot of what's been released today is heavily redacted, meaning the detail in these 1,889 pages is limited.

The appendix contains transcripts of court hearings, interviews and speeches related to the case, such as depositions conducted by the congressional panel that investigated the US Capitol riots on 6 January 2021. Witnesses names are blacked out.

Some of what's been released is information already publicly available - such as voting tabulations and Trump's tweets.

Hundreds of pages remain fully under seal and likely include transcripts of testimony before a grand jury and FBI interviews.

Neither Trump nor Kamala Harris have reacted to the release yet.

While we look through the new documents, here's a bit more detail about how they came to be released today.

Donald Trump's lawyers had made a plea to Judge Tanya Chutkan to stop their release, arguing it could be damaging to the Republican nominee so close to election day.

But the judge turned down the request, saying she had no duty to keep the brief sealed and, because of the election, it was in fact her duty to unseal it.

"If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute - or appear to be - election interference," she wrote in her ruling.

• For context: Federal prosecutors allege Trump pressured officials to reverse the 2020 election result, knowingly spread lies about election fraud and sought to exploit the US Capitol riot in January 2021 to delay the certification of Joe Biden's victory. He's been charged with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Much of the newly-released evidence is heavily redacted - but it does include then Vice-President Mike Pence's formal announcement that he would not overturn the 2020 election results.

This new tranche of documents comes after a separate 165-page evidence brief was released earlier this month by special counsel Jack Smith. That contained a trove of new information about Trump's alleged activities during the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and claimed the Biden administration is behind the prosecution.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud case has unsealed new evidence submitted by the special counsel investigating the matter.

His lawyers had made a plea for the release to be delayed, arguing it could be damaging for Trump so close to the election, but Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the request.

We're poring through the 1,900-page document now, and will bring you more as soon as we have it.

Current overall polling averages give Kamala Harris a razor-thin lead in Michigan - but her edge over Donald Trump has narrowed to below a single percentage point.

So what do voters there think?

Marcie Paul, a Democratic activist, says: “To keep that pace for the whole race - even though it’s seriously abbreviated - would be really unrealistic for anyone.

“But I thought that we’d be a little more comfortable.”

Darrell Sumpter voted for Trump in 2020, but this year is leaning towards Harris.

"I’ve never been able to even afford a house. I’ve been waiting for years,” Sumpter, 52, says.

“I don’t want the country to regress right back to the same state it was with Trump."

Michigan, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are campaigning today, has the country’s largest proportion of Arab-Americans.

It's also the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement, a protest campaign that has tried to pressure the Biden administration to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. The movement has declined to endorse Harris.

In February's Democratic primary in Michigan, part of the process of choosing the party's presidential candidate, over 100,000 people in this community declared themselves "uncommitted" in protest at the government's policy towards Gaza.

On her campaign trail, Harris has taken a harder tone on Israel, denouncing the deaths of Palestinian civilians, but just yesterday she was faced with protestors in Wisconsin who held up banners reading "no genocide on our dime".

Trump has been vocal about his support for Israel but has also promised to end the war, without providing specifics on how he would do so. One expert, Michigan State University politics professor Matt Grossmann, says the former president has won over some Arab-Americans by saying less.

Image source, Reuters

In Germany, where Joe Biden is on what's likely to be his final European visit as US president, he's been speaking about the war in the Middle East.

Ahead of a meeting Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden says the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar "represents a moment of justice" and Israel should use this "opportunity to seek a path to peace, a better future in Gaza without Hamas".

Biden's reference to justice echoes remarks made yesterday by Vice-President Kamala Harris, while out campaigning to become Biden's replacement, that Sinwar's death means "justice has been served" and it "gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza".

• If you're interested:The latest Middle East developments can be tracked in our separate live coverage, including reaction to Sinwar's death.

Image source, Reuters

We've just been hearing from CBS's Jarred Hill, who tells our colleagues on the BBC News channel that Kamala Harris's decision to skip a bipartisan charity event last night could be a message from her campaign that she feels "it's more important to be in one of these battleground states".

Instead of attending the Al Smith charity dinner, Harris was in Wisconsin - a state she is "hoping to lock in", Hill says, adding it's "tight" between her and Donald Trump.

"It's a place that also has significance outside of just the state vote itself," he says, making reference to the "rust belt" - a region in the US that was once dominated by manufacturing.

Both candidates are fighting to secure votes here and win over "blue collar" voters, Hill from CBS, the BBC's US media partner, adds.

• For context: Last night's $5,000 (£3,800) a plate Al Smith dinner has been attended by every major presidential candidate for decades. Kamala Harris, however, didn't attend, opting to send a pre-recorded video as she stayed out on the campaign trail.

Sam Hancock
Live page editor, in Washington DC

Michigan is certainly the focus of Friday's campaigning, with both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris due there for various campaign events, but it's not the only swing state in play today.

Barack Obama, continuing to lend a hand to the Harris campaign, will later host a get-out-the-vote rally in Tucson, Arizona. Last week, the former US president appeared at an event in Pennsylvania, another swing state, and urged black male voters to throw their support behind Kamala Harris.

Some, including fellow Democrats, criticised those remarks. Nina Turner, a former Bernie Sanders surrogate, questioned why black men were "being lectured to" and "belittled in ways that no other voting group is". We'll listen in to Obama's rally later and highlight any key lines.

Meanwhile, there's more in our last post about what the term swing state mean, which you may find helpful. We also have an explainer that takes you through some key details about them - including what issues voters care most about.

With about two-and-a-half weeks to go until election day, stick around as the team and I bring you live updates from the various campaign stops, plus any timely analysis and relevant fact-checking.

In our coverage of the US election, we're always 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:

Rachel Looker
BBC News, Washington

Both Harris and Trump are appearing in Michigan today - a swing state. Let's hear from some voters in key battleground states.

Ben Stumpf, 32, from Michigan, is going to vote for Harris.

"I want to say that it's really disheartening [to carry the weight of a swing state] because I personally believe in more of a ranked-choice voting style and not necessarily the electoral college," he says.

"Being part of a state where it is a little bit more neck and neck and more decisive, it's one of those places where I can understand people really need to go out to make their voices heard."

And in another swing state, Andy Jones, 50, from Pennsylvania, says he is going to vote for Trump. He backed him in the last two elections.

He says when visiting his wife before he moved back to the state in 2018 "I saw Trump signs everywhere in 2016 and I thought: He's going to win."

"In 2020, I saw less Trump signs and I just got a vibe that there's no way he's going to win. Now, it's 50-50. I have no idea what's going to happen."