The Biden campaign announced that the candidate will have two Ohioans, external as his personal guests at tonight's debate: James Evanoff Jr, a union steelworker, and Gurneé Green, an essential worker and clothing shop owner.

Green was previously featured in a video for the Democratic National Convention. She told a local news outlet, external at the time that she and multiple members of her family contracted coronavirus, and that her small business suffered in the pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, President Trump listed his adult children and their spouses on his guest list - that means Ivanka, Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany will all be in attendance.

In 2016, Trump memorably invited four women, external who accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and assault, reportedly to "rattle" then-opponent Hillary Clinton. Thus far, no word of similarly explosive invitees.

Nomia Iqbal
BBC News

Steelworker Mark Williams spoke to Mr Trump on the campaign trail in Ohio in 2016 and was impressed.

Four years later, he has lost his job due to the pandemic, which President Trump has been accused of mismanaging.

Now the president is back again, this time to take on Joe Biden on the debate stage. So, will Williams be voting for him again?

"Yes. I think he's done the best that he can do. The economy was booming before this pandemic and my job will bounce back once people started getting out there."

He says he doesn't have anything in common with either candidate. "I'm not a politician or a millionaire. But I don't like Biden's agenda, the socialist democrat agenda."

What's his red line on Donald Trump?

"If he doesn't follow the constitution - I think he's just trying to get under people's skin by saying he won't step down if he loses."

You can see Mark Williams when he met the BBC's Katty Kay in 2016 in the video below.

Angelica Casas
Video journalist, BBC News

Joe Biden is almost six decades older than 18-year-olds eligible to vote for the first time in this election - but the age gap is not why he’s struggling to connect with young Democrats.After all, Millennial and Gen-Z voters enthusiastically backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic nomination contest - the Vermont senator is 79 compared to Biden’s 77 years.Just before the party convention in mid-August, I spoke to a dozen young Democrats from around the country. They are highly engaged (or "woke" as some would say) in this election, with strong views on the state of the world and how to fix it. But many were worried about their candidate’s moderate policy positions - and more motivated by kicking President Trump out of office.Will that be enough to get them to turn out in this election?

Image source, Reuters

As the pandemic rolls on and the US economy founders, the stage was already set for Donald Trump to be on the defensive tonight. But two days ago, the president gained a new headache - an explosive report in the New York Times about his minuscule tax contributions and massive personal debt.

The Times revealed that its reporters have years' worth of the president's long sought-after personal income taxes, which he has refused to disclose for years. They show Trump paid only $750 (£583) in federal income taxes the year he was elected, and that his portfolio of golf courses and hotels was struggling. It adds that the president is "personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million", external.

Rival Joe Biden signaled that he'll pounce on these new revelations, tweeting yesterday, "How much more did you pay in taxes than President Trump?", external

The topic is all but sure to rankle the president, who does not take kindly to accusations that he is neither as rich nor as talented a businessman as he boasts. And while he dodged reporters' questions about the Times report yesterday, he will not be able to do the same onstage with Biden.

Trump's taxes: What you need to know

Image source, Twitter

Joe Biden's campaign has launched a new Twitter account @Truth which it says will call out falsehoods by Donald Trump during the debate later.

Fact-checkers have routinely found that Trump has made false or inaccurate statements before and during his presidency, with the Washington Post newspaper estimating that the number exceeds 20,000.

But Biden is not immune to making inaccurate statements too, including during a town hall event in September, which was fact-checked by CNN., external

The BBC's Reality Check team will be live fact-checking both candidates during the debate tonight. You will be able to read all their analysis on this page.

Image source, Getty Images

The eyes of the world will be on Cleveland later, the largest city in a state with strong presidential connections.

Seven men who have occupied the White House were born in Ohio, a US record apart from the cradle of the republic, Virginia.

It's also in recent years been something of a bellwether for US elections - only once since 1944 has it picked the losing candidate.

Ohio is older and whiter than the US average and in 2016, Trump's message appealed to rural and working-class voters who felt the economy wasn't working for them.

He promised the jobs were coming back and he swept the state ahead of Clinton by a wide margin.

But manufacturing plants have continued to close and this time it's on a knife-edge, with him and Biden neck-and-neck in the polls.

Who will Ohio pick this time?

Take a look at how Trump is doing in the polls

You are joining us on debate day, 35 days ahead of the presidential election.

• Tonight's debate is the first of three in the run-up to the election and will take place in Cleveland, Ohio
• Democratic nominee Joe Biden is expected to arrive by train, while President Donald Trump will fly in from Washington DC
• Because of coronavirus measures, the audience will be far smaller than usual and the two candidates won't shake hands before the event begins
• The six topics to be debated are: Trump and Biden's records, the Supreme Court, Coronavirus pandemic, race protests and violence in cities, election integrity and the economy
• All these topics have been dominating the US media in recent months. Today's headlines also include top White House officials allegedly pressuring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downplay the coronavirus risk to children, and the New York Times' second installment on Trump's taxes.

You can watch the 90-minute debate live here on this page, on the BBC News channel and on BBC World from 21:00 EST (02:00 UK time).

Joe Biden’s allies are worried about how their candidate will react to what is expected to be a series of blistering personal attacks from Donald Trump, according to the Washington Post newspaper., external

Quoting sources with knowledge of both camps' debate strategies, the paper says Biden is being warned not to lose his temper and lash out, which might under cut his "pitch as a calming alternative to a president who thrives on chaos".

Fearing that the challenger may be a little rusty when it comes to withstanding the anticipated vicious criticism in person, one congressional aide tells the paper: "It's like training for a knife fight and somebody is getting an Uzi."

Nomia Iqbal
BBC News

Farmer Sarah Moser is having a tough time - she's a Republican trying to persuade Trump supporters in Ohio to vote for Joe Biden

"It hasn't been fun!"

How people vote in Ohio matters - traditionally a Republican has to win the state to get to the White House. Donald Trump carried the state comfortably in 2016 but recent polls suggest he is neck and neck with Joe Biden.

But if it was a contest on who has the most flags and signs on lawns, President Trump would win easily.

Image source, Reuters

"It is very hard to be for anyone but Trump where I'm at, it's rural red," says Moser, a mother of five who lives in Van Wert County.

"The other part that's hard is convincing people that Biden is actually more Republican than Trump. That he has those values I learned growing up - hard work, caring about people and good Christian values."

Sarah says she regrets not voting for Hillary Clinton and has now thrown her support behind a group made up of Republicans against Mr Trump.

What if Donald Trump is re-elected?

"I looked at a place in Canada but our roots are here and that's why I'm trying to be a voice, so that other people can have their voice.

"I feel like us Biden fans are the ones that are quiet and silent and waiting until November 3rd to show our power."

At the moment, polls in the battleground states - areas that could conceivably vote Republican or Democrat - look good for Joe Biden. They suggest he has big leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - three industrial states Donald Trump won by margins of less than 1% to clinch victory in 2016.

Image source, bbc

Emily Maitlis
BBC Newsnight Presenter

As an interviewer and moderator I tend to be big on prep – I settle in with my colourful highlighters and my notes and my quotes and my numbers beforehand, trying to make my understanding as rock solid as I can.

But in reality, there’s almost no way to fully prepare for a debate of this nature – because debates happen so much in the moment – the need to be nimble will be more important.

The stagecraft itself is sometimes overlooked – but it’s absolutely vital. It’s imperative that the moderator can look both presidential candidates in the eye at all times – you need to be able to spot an interjection coming, or know when it’s an interruption too far. You need to watch their facial expressions when the other is talking, and you need to make sure one of them isn’t stalking the other around the room.

The biggest concern I would have as a moderator is the fact-checking. If something is said that’s untrue – you correct it, backed up by data you have (hopefully) at your fingertips. But if the same untrue claim is repeated – and repeated again – then what do you do?

To carry on correcting slows the pace down and makes you sound pedantic. To ignore it is to play into a new reality where truth is unimportant. I don’t think any journalist wants to find themselves there.

It’s been reported that 80 million people will tune into the first debate. A fraction of those will have their mind changed by it. Perhaps that sense of proportion is quite important.

Image source, Getty Images

The candidates will do away with the customary handshake when they meet on stage due to the pandemic. An elbow tap was considered, but both campaigns said it would be too awkward, according to Politico.

Trump, Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace will not be required to wear masks once they take the stage. However, there is a chance that Biden - who has curtailed campaign travel due to the pandemic - may emerge wearing a mask as a visual comparison to Trump, who has downplayed the virus' danger.

Two universities - in Indiana and Michigan - cancelled their plans to host debates over virus concerns.

The audience at the new host - an Ohio university - has been limited to about 70 people who will be tested for Covid-19 beforehand and must wear masks. Typical in-person debate audiences usually reach around 900 people, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Also gone is the normally crowded “spin room”, where campaign representatives give break-out news conferences to scrums of journalists where they make their case for why their candidate won the debate.

Reality Check

As a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, a large proportion of US voters are expected to use postal ballots for this year’s presidential election. In some states, all voting is expected to be by post.

Mr Trump has repeatedly warned that this will lead to widespread fraud.

Reality Check has looked into the use of postal ballots in the United States in previous elections and found that although there have been isolated cases, numerous nationwide and state-level studies over the years have revealed no evidence of major, widespread fraud.

There have been suggestions that an increase in postal voting would help turnout among Democratic voters, but there is no strong evidence that either party would gain an advantage.

Some voters in the New York borough of Brooklyn are receiving absentee ballots with worrisome errors, according to a report out last night, external from the news outlet Gothamist.

The trouble lies with the return envelopes. Once voters complete their ballots, they place them in a provided return envelope which bear their name and address, and sign it. According to the complaints, those names and addresses on the envelopes were incorrect - a mistake which, if submitted, would render the ballot invalid. The city's board of elections blamed the printing company for the errors and vowed to correct the mistakes before election day. It's unclear how many ballots are affected.

Voters in the borough of Queens also reported receiving ballots erroneously marked "military", external, however, this would not likely affected the ballot being counted.

President Trump retweeted multiple stories about the erroneous ballots this morning, as he has repeatedly sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of absentee voting. The president argues that expanded use of mail-in ballots will lead to "tremendous fraud", without providing evidence. Election officials say the process has been used for decades and will keep voters safe in the pandemic.

Neither Donald Trump or Joe Biden have released how they will spend the final hours before their face-off in the debate, though it's likely it will involve some last-minute preparations.

Donald Trump is travelling from Washington to Cleveland with his wife, Melania.

Joe Biden's wife, Jill, will spend the day in Michigan campaigning on her husband's behalf, including touring a farm in the agricultural state.

According to the Washington Post, Joe Biden is planning to leave Cleveland via train - one of his favourite methods of transport. Called the “Build Back Better Train Tour”, it will make five stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Image source, Getty Images

In the last few weeks, Biden has been studying his briefing books - all printed in his favourite size-14 Arial font, according to the New York Times - and holding prep sessions with staff in person at his Delaware home, as well as on Zoom.

His campaign say Donald Trump's habit of lying and misrepresenting facts will complicate Biden’s attempts to stay on message. His debate team is reportedly studying all of Trump’s tweets about Biden to discover possible lines of attack.

Biden officials are also warning their candidate not to attempt to fact-check Trump too aggressively and not get too “in the weeds” on detailed policy proposals - something he’s prone to doing as a former longtime senator.

Despite so much resting on both candidates' performances, Joe Biden's staff have been trying to play down the significance of the debate and lower the public's expectations.

Image source, EPA

If you needed any more evidence for how starkly divided US society is at the moment, new research suggests that few Biden or Trump supporters can bear to be close friends with someone that votes for the other guy.

According to the Pew Research Center, some four-in-10 registered voters in both camps say that they do not have a single close friend, external who supports the other major party candidate.

What happened to opposites attract?

Read more: The voters who don’t like Trump or Biden

Image source, PA Media

Image source, Getty Images

Chris Wallace is a long-time host on Fox News, which you’d think would get him a big tick from President Trump, right? Wrong. Despite his network's conservative leanings, Wallace has actually had a few run-ins with Trump during the last four years. In a recent interview, Wallace revealed he had also taken a cognitive ability test that the president touted, external, and that it was "not the hardest test".

The 72-year-old journalist is a registered Democrat - something he has attributed to “pragmatism” while living in heavily Democratic Washington, DC.

Yet when Wallace hosted the final 2016 debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, he won widespread praise for pressing each candidate even-handedly on uncomfortable issues. He said at the time that he took moderating debates "very seriously... because this is helping millions of people decide who we're going to elect as the next president".

Trump has been pretty critical of the newsman, calling him a "Mike Wallace wannabe" - a reference to Wallace's father, one of the original members of CBS’s acclaimed 60 Minutes programme. He described him as "even worse" than the presenters of NBC and CBS Sunday morning shows - networks that Trump often criticises.

Read our profile of Chris Wallace here

As the first of this year's presidential debates draws nearer, the BBC's Anthony Zurcher takes a look at how Donald Trump and Joe Biden are likely to approach tonight's meet.

Image source, Getty Images

It’s normal for candidates to hold mock debates as preparation, with top aides playing the role of the candidate’s opponent.

But Trump has mostly steered clear of this approach and instead relies on aides feeding him notecards to memorise during presidential trips, according to CBS News.

Trump campaign manager Tim Murtaugh says that his boss prepares by “regularly facing hostile news media” and says that his presidential duties sufficiently prepare him to face Biden. On Sunday, Trump told an audience of journalists at the White House: "I think this whole thing though is debate prep”.

"You know, what I do is debate prep. Every day, I'm taking questions from you people over time."

Asked who was playing the role of Biden during mock debates, Trump said it was “maybe a combination” of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former New York City Mayor and personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

According to the New York Times, he has told his staff he is considering attacking Biden on his son’s controversial job at a Ukrainian energy firm and the accusation of sexual assault from former Biden aide Tara Reade.