More than 60 million people have cast early votes in the US election, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab
This beats the early voter turnout record set in the 2020 election - when around 158 million people voted in total
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in the south-west hitting the campaign trail, with just five days to go until the election
Earlier, Elon Musk failed to attend court for a lawsuit hearing concerning his million-dollar cash giveaways in swing states - US officials suggest the giveaways may break electoral law, which Musk denies
The race for the White House is on a knife edge - check our poll tracker here
We are now turning to former President Donald Trump, who is also campaigning in North Carolina.
Trump is speaking to a large crowd in Rocky Mount that seems equally as enthusiastic as the crowd at the Harris event just moments ago.
He has started his speech talking about immigration and the border, criticising his opponent for the government's handling of the US-Mexico border.
Image source, Nimasheena BurnsNimasheena Burns was at the Harris rally in Raleigh, and she's just sent us a quick selfie to show what it was like in the crowd.
Burns says it's been "a party for hours and she is killing it. USA chants, multiple pauses and applause breaks."
The Harris supporter also says the lady in front her in the crowd was a retiree, and she was in tears because when Harris was the California attorney general she "saved her home from foreclosure".
Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Washington
Kamala Harris also direct appeals to first-time voters and "young leaders" of America, who she says are "impatient" for change.
In her remarks, Harris specifically called on those who have "grown up with climate change", dealt with school shooters while trying to keep their communities safe and grew up with "fewer rights than their parents and grandparents".
A direct appeal to Generation Z voters has become something of a fixture of Harris's speeches in the final days of the campaign.
At a rally I attended in Kalamazoo, Michigan over the weekend, she used many of the same phrases while speaking directly to young voters.
Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Washington DC
Image source, US PoolThere's a raucous crowd welcoming Kamala Harris at her campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, in which she's so far recounted her major policy objectives and her past as Attorney General in California - a key message of hers in the final days of the campaign.
She's also echoing the remarks about Donald Trump she made last night in Washington DC, calling Donald Trump "unstable, obsessed with revenge and consumed with grievance".
"We have the opportunity to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump," she adds. "It is time for a new chapter where we stop with the pointing fingers...we have so much more in common than what separates us."
Harris also focuses on abortion access - and has repeatedly promises her supporters victory next week.
The event is briefly interrupted by a man who appeared to be shouting at Harris – he's escorted from the venue and drowned out by the crowd chanting "Kamala! Kamala!"
Tom Bateman
Reporting from North Carolina
We are now at the rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
There is a crowd several-thousand strong packing out a standing area and backed up into the park in front of the stage.
Some hold Harris-Walz banners, others pictures of the VP. And there are white and blue campaign T-shirts dotted right through the audience.
Many are bouncing to the soundtrack, currently Love Train by The O’Jays.
A huge screen beams down to the crown “when we vote, we win”.
We await the VP.
North Carolina: At a glance
A machete-wielding teenager in Florida was arrested on Tuesday after he allegedly threatened voters at a polling station.
Caleb Williams arrived to the Beaches Branch Library to show his support for Donald Trump and to harass voters that didn't share his political views, police allege.
The 18-year-old then "brandished a machete in an aggressive, threatening posture over his head" in the library's parking lot, police said, as he faced two women in their 50s and 70s.
He was charged with aggravated assault.
Seven other people were in the group, aged between 16 and 17.
"The group was there for no other reason but for ill intentions, to cause a disturbance," Police Chief Michael Key said.
The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a Republican-led effort to remove more than 1,600 voters from Virginia's voter rolls.
In August - with exactly 90 days until election day - Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order to expedite the removal of non-citizens from the state's voter rolls. Non-US citizens are ineligible from voting in federal elections.
The Justice Department sued the state in October, arguing that some eligible voters had been removed, which would violate federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires states to complete any purge of ineligible voters from registration lists up to 90 days before a federal election.
The Supreme Court has granted the state's request to pause a lower court's order which had blocked the voter removal programme.
A Justice Department spokesperson said: “The Department brought this suit to ensure that every eligible American citizen can vote in our elections. We disagree with the Supreme Court’s order.”
In a statement, Youngkin called the order "a victory for commonsense and election fairness".
Mike Wendling
Reporting from Wisconsin
Today both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are making their pitch to crowds in the battleground state of Wisconsin, but the presidential race is not the only important one on the ballot in this Midwestern state.
Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is facing a challenge from Republican businessman Eric Hovde, and polls indicate that race is extremely tight as well.
Both sides have poured millions into the race, and Democrats stand a slim chance of retaining a majority in the US Senate if Baldwin cannot successfully defend her seat.
Wisconsinites will also vote yes or no on a proposition that would make a seemingly minor change to the state constitution around voter eligibility.
Currently the law says “every” citizen 18 years or older living in Wisconsin can vote. The amendment on the ballot, if passed, would change that language to specifiy that “only” US citizens can vote.
Republicans, who are backing the change, say it would prevent non-citizens from voting, now or in the future. But Democrats argue that it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Image source, Getty ImagesFormer Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has weighed in on the 2024 election by endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket.
Schwarzenegger wrote in a post on X that he "hates politics more than ever" and wants to "tune out".
"But I can't. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets," he said, referencing Trump.
"Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results," he wrote. "Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime."
Schwarzenegger said four more years of a Trump presidency will bring no results and make Americans more divided and hateful.
"I will always be an American before I am a Republican," he says.
Watch: Harris responds to Biden 'garbage' comment
Vice-President Kamala Harris just spoke to reporters at Joint Base Andrews.
BBC's Tom Bateman asked if she sympathises with voters if they feel offended or insulted by the "garbage" comments made by President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
Harris replied: “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”
To wrap up the press conference in Georgia, we also heard from a state election official who warned that "the threat environment is different now".
"We do get reports of people planning potential physical issues on machines themselves, and we are in regular communication" (with FBI) about potential threats, said Gabriel Sterling - the chief operating officer for Georgia's Secretary of State office.
Sterling said state and local offices are "more prepared" this year, but he also said he did not want to go into any further details because: "When you say, 'Hey, we’re ready for anything', people say, 'hold my beer.'"
After the last election, some of the accusations of election fraud were linked to rumours about voting machines being connected to the internet.
It's a claim election officials have repeatedly dismissed, which Sterling does again here, saying: "Voting machines are never connected to the internet, so they can’t be hacked remotely."
More now from Georgia's Secretary of State Raffensperger's press conference, where he told a story about his grandson's baseball team who lost their game but still shook the hand of the victor immediately afterwards.
"I think that's what America is," Raffensperger says. "Gracefully accepting your win, but also gracefully accepting your losses."
The comment is sure to be interpreted by many as an allusion to Donald Trump and the former president's claims that his loss in Georgia in 2020 was because of fraud.
Back in 2020, Raffensperger called Trump's false claims that he won the state in 2020 "just plain wrong". Trump had pressured him in a phone call to "find" votes proving his win.
Trump is currently facing two lawsuits - in Georgia and the US - for allegedly attempting to overturn the last presidential election.
Voters in the key battleground state of Georgia "are smashing through every voting record", Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has just announced.
More than 3 million people have participated in early voting in the state, Raffensperger says, compared to 2.1 million at this point in the last presidential election.
Two-thirds of the entire election turnout from 2020 have already voted in Georgia.
Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020 by less than 1%.
After Trump lost to Joe Biden, he accused the state of election fraud and called Raffensperger asking him to "find" enough votes that would give Trump the win.
Trump is facing a lawsuit in Georgia for allegedly attempting to overturn the election.
We're currently hearing from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, you can watch a live stream of his remarks at the top of this page.
And we'll bring you the key lines of his speech.
Mike Wendling
Reporting from Wisconsin
Both candidates will also be rallying today in Wisconsin, and I’ll be driving up and down the state to check the mood among their supporters and others along the way.
Donald Trump will be joined by former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, in an arena not far from where the NFL team play home games.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is heading to the college town of Madison, looking to draw in a big crowd with a lineup of musicians: Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons, Remi Wolf, and members of The National.
Wisconsin is one of the seven crucial swing states that will decide the outcome of the election and, with 10 electoral votes, it’s one of the smaller prizes on the battleground map.
But no effort is being spared – not only will the candidates visit this Midwestern state today, both will likely return again before Election Day.
My path today will keep me exclusively in the east and south-east parts of the state – which is where most of the voters are. Harris is hoping to run up the score in the state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison. Trump has strong support in rural areas. Hotly contested suburban areas around Milwaukee and politically mixed counties around Green Bay might prove to be decisive – in Wisconsin, and perhaps the nation.
Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent
In sports, “garbage time” is a reference to the ending moments of a game, when the teams are still playing but the winner is clear.
The last few days of this presidential race, where the outcome is still very much in doubt, are redefining the term.
Joe Biden’s “garbage” gaffe, coming on the heels of a political firestorm over a comedian’s reference to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” at a Donald Trump rally, has given Republicans an opportunity to shift the political conversation and put Democrats on the defensive.
The political potency of this garbage exchange comes, in part, because it seemingly confirms what many in each party think about their opponents – with Democrats believing Trump’s side demeans ethnic minorities, while Republicans are convinced the left views the former president’s supporters as worthless.
Biden has a history of verbal stumbles, the growing number of which were one of the reasons the party pressured him to abandon his re-election bid.
In recent weeks, Biden’s usefulness as a political advocate has been a subject of concern for the Harris team, as they have reportedly been reluctant to offer him high-profile campaign events despite his desire to go on the stump.
This should settle that debate – and give Democrats another reason to be grateful they made the switch to Harris in July.
The Democratic faithful will be quick to point out all the derisive comments Trump has made at his rallies and in interviews, such as referring last Friday to America as “the garbage can for the world”. But in the last week of the campaign, and with the margins between the two candidates seemingly so narrow, even small political twists can be amplified to a deafening roar.
The economy is the number one issue at the top of most voters' minds.
But not much further down on the priority list is abortion rights, particularly among women. The issue is a central part of a growing gender divide among voters in this election.
The 2024 presidential election is the first since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which protected the national right to an abortion.
The BBC has been speaking to women voters about how they are considering gender and abortion as they cast their ballots in the final days of the campaign.
Michelle Allen, a registered Republican in the battleground state of Arizona, said she plans to vote for the Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris - who has heavily campaigned on protecting abortion rights.
"I'm concerned about women's rights and women's health care," Allen said. I'm not a one-issue voter, but that is a huge one."
As we've just been saying, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will both visit North Carolina today.
The latest polls suggest the race tightened in the Tar Heel State after Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.
Some analysts now call it a "toss-up".
Trump, who has said it is a "very, very big state to win," carried North Carolina in 2020 but did so by just over 70,000 votes, which has further buoyed Democrats' hopes that this "purple" state (one that could vote red or blue) could be winnable in this election year.
Brandon Drenon
Reporting from Washington
Back on the campaign trail, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will both make stops today in North Carolina - a critical battleground state that could determine who takes the White House.
Between the two candidates, both have made dozens of visits to the state over the last few months, as Harris tries to defy history by being only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in 50 years.
Polls currently suggest Trump has a one point lead in North Carolina, effectively mounting to a tie, but I've been speaking to voters and both parties are concerned.
One factor is Hurricane Helene, which slammed into the state at the end of September wreaking destruction in western parts of the state like Buncombe County. The county's Republican chair, Doug Brown, says firefighters have been delivering absentee ballots in some of the hardest hit areas.
In the initial days of early voting, the county has been breaking records, he says, adding: "People want to vote."
Susan Roberts, a political scientist at Davidson University in North Carolina said Helene may be the X-factor that tilts the race for Democrats, after President Joe Biden narrowly lost there in 2020 by 1.3%. "Trump needs every western Carolina vote because that's rural and it is red," she tells me.
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent
When US President Joe Biden walked through Kyiv in February 2023 on a surprise visit to show solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, air sirens were wailing.
"I felt something… more strongly than ever before," he later recalled. "America is a beacon to the world."
The world now waits to see who takes charge of this self-styled beacon after Americans make their choice in next week’s presidential election.
Will Kamala Harris carry on in Biden’s footsteps with her conviction that in "these unsettled times, it is clear America cannot retreat"? Or will it be Donald Trump with his hope that "Americanism, not globalism" will lead the way?
We live in a world where the value of US global influence is under question. Regional powers are going their own way, autocratic regimes are making their own alliances, and the devastating wars in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere are raising uncomfortable questions about the value of Washington’s role.
But America matters by dint of its economic and military strength, and its major role in many alliances.
Informed observers shared their views with me about some of the hurdles the next US president will face - including global conflicts, the climate crisis and business with China. Get up to speed with what they had to say.