Image source, Getty Images

Trump's been hosting a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania - a key state for him to win next month. He spoke to an enthusiastic crowd, who were quick to cheer him on.

The president focused his attacks on Biden's energy policies, which are a big issue for voters in the state.

He said Biden "blew" the last presidential debate by saying on live television that he would "abolish the entire US oil industry".

"That means no fracking, no jobs, no energy for Pennsylvania families."

To a chorus of boos, Trump continued: "He will eradicate your energy and send Pennsylvania into a crippling depression."

Since the debate, the Biden campaign has clarified that Mr Biden planned to phase out taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel companies, not the industry altogether. He also does not support a fracking ban but would end leases on federal land.

Image source, EPA

US First Lady Melania Trump is set to hit the campaign trail on Tuesday, with an event in swing state Pennsylvania.

In her first solo campaign stop of 2020, she will speak to voters in Atglen. The event will be moderated by former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Conway told Fox News the first lady would “highlight how her platform has helped Pennsylvanians and… make the case for four more years of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and security.”

Mrs Trump recently recovered from Covid-19 and penned an essay about her experience., external

She pulled out of a rare joint campaign appearance with her husband last week "out of an abundance of caution" because of a “lingering cough”.

Ritu Prasad
BBC News writer, Florida

Image source, Getty Images

With Senator Kamala Harris as a historic vice-presidential running mate, it's impossible to avoid the topic of gender this election cycle - but are the rules of the race really different for women?

Research shows that unconscious biases can make women come across as condescending where their male counterparts might be lauded as confident. Some analysts also argue that where people assume competency for men, women must demonstrate it.

Another notable difference: the way family comes up.

Harris has often highlighted her family life in introducing herself to the nation. But bringing up motherhood can be a "conundrum" for women, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University - sometimes prompting questions of who's taking care of the kids if mom's out on the campaign trail.

One only has to look back to Sarah Palin's 2008 vice-presidential run to see that play out. At the time, Palin had five children, including a baby with Down syndrome. Critics wondered if she was neglecting her family to run for office.

But it's also clear that things are changing - especially since 2018, when we saw a surge in the number of women running for office across the US.

Read the full story here.

Today we're focusing on LGBT voters of all political views.

First up, Heidi. She is a single mother, a civil servant and an independent voter who casts her ballot based on who she thinks best serves the interests of everyday middle-class Americans. This year she's voting for Joe Biden.

As a lesbian Latina, she is concerned about the direction the country may go under four more years of Trump with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Why does this election matter to you?

I felt a deep sense of helplessness and foreboding when I heard President Trump had been elected in 2016. I support Joe Biden this year because he supports causes that are important to me, such as preserving marriage equality and protecting the environment.

Does being LGBT influence your vote?

Being an LGBT voter means everything. It frightens me that freedoms and rights to protect me and my family that I felt had become law are all of a sudden hanging in the balance again.

What is your reaction to today's likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court?

Her confirmation poses a grave threat to previous Supreme Court decisions that now could be reversed. Marriage equality, abortion and the Affordable Care Act, to name a few. Where does this end? It's very frightening.

These voters are members of our US election voter panel. You'll hear more from them throughout the week.

Join the conversation:

• We want to hear from you - what questions do you have about the US election?
• In five words, tell us what's at stake in this election.

Image source, Getty Images

Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser and Ivanka Trump's husband, is making headlines today for the way he tried to promote the president's policies to African Americans.

Spoiler: Some on social media aren't pleased.

Kushner told Fox News this morning: "One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about, but he can't want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful."

He added that there was a "groundswell of support in the black community" for Trump because they see he's delivered on his promises.

"President Trump may not always say the right things, but he does the right things. He says what’s on his mind and he gets results."

Critics have slammed the comments for suggesting black Americans don't work hard enough.

As for Trump's support among black voters? The majority are still for Biden, though many younger black voters are more anti-Trump than pro-Biden, external.

But he has made some gains - particularly among black men. A FiveThirtyEight analysis last week, external noted he improved by 15 percentage points among black male voters from 2016.

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American played at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, earlier today, according to SV Date, external, a journalist traveling with the president.

The rally is one of three that Trump is holding in the state, a place that offers a possible path to his re-election. People who live in the Philadelphia suburbs lean Democratic but out in the countryside, he has fans.

One woman I met recently in rural Pennsylvania, Cassandra Gimbe, who works in a bakery, told me she was not interested in politics before Trump but now plans to vote for him: "I feel like I can connect to him because he’s down to earth."

If he can get enough people like Gimbe to cast their ballot, he could win the state, giving him a better chance of holding onto the White House.

Image source, EPA

The White House is planning a celebration to mark the expected confirmation of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.

It comes just a month after a White House event announcing her nomination was linked to a Covid-19 outbreak that infected the president and others close to him.

Top US virus expert Dr Anthony Fauci described it as a “superspreader event”, saying people were crowded together and not wearing masks.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has tried to ease concerns this time around, telling reporters the event planned for Monday evening would likely be held outside and that they would be “doing the best we can to encourage as much social distancing as possible".

Reality Check

Image source, Reuters

In the closing days of the US election campaign, President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has become a major issue.

One significant point of contention has been the wearing of face coverings, something supporters of the president have often been unwilling to do, notably at his rallies.

Posts shared thousands of times on Facebook are falsely claiming that Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert – who strongly recommends the wearing of coverings – once wrote a paper saying face masks led to mass deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic.

However, the posts cite a report co-authored by Dr Fauci in 2008 which makes absolutely no mention of masks.

The study found the majority of deaths during the 1918 pandemic were not caused by the virus alone but that most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following the influenza infection.

The suggestion in some of the posts has been that the wearing of masks somehow led to catching bacterial pneumonia.

However Dr Tom Wingfield, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine says “it’s difficult to see a biologically plausible explanation for why that could happen.”

“In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the benefits for individuals - and those around them - of wearing a mask in enclosed spaces outweigh the risks of not wearing one,” he adds.

Dr Fauci, who has frequently questioned President Trump’s handling of the pandemic, has been targeted by misinformation campaigns before.

Image source, Getty Images

America did not suddenly become divided when President Trump won the 2016 election. His predecessor also faced angry protests during his first term in the White House.

Barack Obama writes about the "Tea Party summer" of 2010 in his latest memoir, excerpts of which were published today in the New Yorker magazine, external.

The former president describes the demonstrations against his healthcare plan as "an organised effort to marry people’s honest fears about a changing America with a right-wing political agenda".

Image source, Getty Images

"Heading to and from every venue, we were greeted by dozens of angry protesters,” he writes. "Some shouted through bullhorns. Others flashed a single-fingered salute. Many held up signs with messages like 'Obamacare sucks' or the unintentionally ironic 'keep government out of my medicare'."

Obama says he had a "grudging respect" for how the Tea Party leaders imitated his own campaign’s social media and grassroots organising strategies to mobilise supporters.

Image source, EPA

Negotiations over a new stimulus bill to inject cash into the virus-hit US economy are continuing but have lost momentum, according to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

Speaking to CNBC, Kudlow said the talks between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats had “certainly slowed down, but they're not ending".

"We're close, but there are still important policy issues that separate us”, he said.

Kudlow said talks were set to continue on Monday.

Each side has previously said they want a deal passed before the election, but experts say this is unlikely.

The last of three US coronavirus stimulus packages was passed in March, and many of the funds have already been depleted.

From the electoral college and battleground states, to when the winner takes office, find out everything you need to know about the election in our simple guide.

Image source, Getty Images

Music legend Cher has released a new track to help Joe Biden at the polls - a politically updated cover of the 1943 song Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe.

"Right now our country’s gloomy, fear is in the air," the new lyrics go, "But when Joe’s president, hope is everywhere".

Cher first performed the song at last night's I Will Vote concert, and it's been officially released today.

A vocal critic of President Trump, Cher has been out and about campaigning for Biden, who she backed in February.

Cher's part of quite the crew of celebs who've come out in support of Joe Biden - but do these glitzy endorsements really help? Our reporter Holly Honderich looked into the issue here.

Image source, Getty Images

With just eight days to go until the election, here's a look at some of today's most interesting stories:

• Conservative social media users are revelling in the fact that Amy Coney Barrett is set to be confirmed to the Supreme Court on Hillary Clinton’s birthday. Like other Democrats, Mrs Clinton has said a new justice should not be appointed in an election year
• Rapper Lil Pump has endorsed Donald Trump, railing against Joe Biden’s tax plan in an Instagram story shared with his 17.3 million followers. The 20-year-old also posted a clearly an edited image of himself sitting next to the president
• Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have threatened to sue a conservative anti-Trump group for giant billboards they put up in New York's Times Square that implied the couple were indifferent to the toll of the pandemic

Read about all these stories and more in our Countdown

President Donald Trump has left the White House - and then Joint Air Base Andrews - for another day of campaigning, this time in the battleground state of Pennsylvania - seen as critical, and much-courted by both campaigns.

The first event of the day will see Trump addressing US workers in Allentown, before holding campaign rallies in Lititz and Johnstown.

His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, is expected to stay in his home state of Delaware on Monday, before travelling to Georgia on Tuesday.

As both camps enter their final full week of campaigning, their attention remains on the states that could decide the outcome of the election.

James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

Our theme today may be on a Divided America - but it's not all a domestic affair. Here's a look from across the pond at how the "special relationship" between the US and UK has also changed in the last four years.

In Grosvenor Square, a leafy haven in the heart of London, you will find a grand statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the great wartime American president. Below it, an inscription reveals the statue was paid for by "small sums from people in every walk of life throughout the UK".

At a time of grim post-war austerity and food rationing, 160,000 Britons were so admiring of America they were willing to pay five shillings each - about 8 pounds in today's money - to erect a statue in memory of its former president.

This memorial marks perhaps the zenith of US-UK relations. It is doubtful today many Britons would fork out hard-earned cash to raise a likeness of Donald Trump.

Transatlantic relations over the past four years have been ragged.

There have been "ups and downs at a political level", the ever-diplomatic Lord Sedwill, Britain's recent national security adviser, told the BBC. "President Trump is a very unusual occupant of that office."

Read James' full analysis here.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Due to the pandemic, election officials are handling an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots.

And they are getting surprises in some of them, the Washington Post reports, external.

Staff in some Washington, DC counties say they are finding thank-you notes from voters tucked into the return envelopes.

"Thanks for making my vote count," reads one.

The paper also reported that voters are taking steps to ensure their ballots are counted, like including photocopies of identification - not a necessary step, officials say.

But voters are being asked to carefully review the rules around mail-in voting where they live, because regulations are not the same from state to state.

Read more about the surge in early voting, including mail-in voting, here.

Marianna Spring
Specialist disinformation reporter

The US election campaign is full of talk about the pandemic, the Supreme Court and police reform. But millions of Americans are tuning into an entirely different conversation.

"Saying it out loud, it just sounds crazy," says 24-year-old Jade Flury, reading out a recent text conversation she had with one of her friends.

Her friend has been taken in by Instagram videos about QAnon - an unfounded conspiracy theory that says Donald Trump is fighting a secret war against a deep state of satanic paedophiles in government, business and the media.

Despite her best efforts to counter false claims about "Democratic Party elites" running a child-trafficking ring, she's had to give up.

"He definitely feels like a 'sex ring' is still a thing," she says, "and asks why no reporters are putting as much effort into finding some underlying truth to this stuff as they are into trying to discredit it."

The truth is that reporters have looked into it. While the sprawling mess that is QAnon sucks in a few morsels of fact, its core is fiction, with no evidence to substantiate it.

It was born on extreme message boards such as 4chan and 8chan - probably as a joke or prank - and rapidly spread among some of the president's most devoted followers.

Read the full story here

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

Image source, Getty Images

It’s eight days until the presidential election, but Donald Trump is poised for another kind of victory – one that, even if he loses next week, will shape US politics for decades to come.

Polls suggest that changing the ideological balance of the US court system was one of the reasons Republicans, particularly evangelical Christians, overwhelmingly supported Trump four years ago, despite questions about his personal behaviour.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," was a common refrain from religious conservatives asked to explain their vote for Trump.

With the president about to deliver again on his promise to reshape the US judiciary, it could serve as extra motivation for these same conservatives to reward him at the polls next week.

Or, perhaps, they will become complacent. The latter explains why the Trump campaign has spotlighted Democratic calls for court reforms, including adding new justices to the Supreme Court. Such a move could undo the gains Republicans have made under Trump.

Such a significant reform seems unlikely without Joe Biden’s explicit support, however, leaving the Trump campaign to hope that when it comes to turning out their voters next week, gratitude will be as strong a motivator as fear.

Donald Trump set up a coronavirus task force at the end of January which he says has now shifted its focus to "safety and opening up our country".

The president is also prioritising the speedy development of coronavirus treatments and vaccines, directing $10bn towards such projects.

Joe Biden wants to set up a national contact-tracing programme, establish at least 10 testing centres in every state, and provide free coronavirus testing to all.

He supports a nationwide mask mandate, which would require face coverings to be worn on federal property.

Donald Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed under President Obama, which increased the federal government's regulation of the private health insurance system, including making it illegal to deny coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions. He says he wants to improve and replace it, although no details of the plan have been published.

The president also aims to lower drug prices by allowing imports of cheaper ones from abroad.

Joe Biden wants to protect and expand the ACA.

He wants to lower the eligibility age for Medicare, the policy which provides medical benefits to the elderly, from 65 to 60. He also wants to give all Americans the option to enrol in a public health insurance plan similar to Medicare.

Vineet Khare
BBC News, Washington DC

Image source, Shekar Narasimhan

Indians and Pakistanis are often seen as being at loggerheads because of strained relations between their respective countries. But in the US, the two communities are part of the same South Asian diaspora and often work together during political campaigns.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders account for more than 20 million people in the US, but their voter registration and turnout is said to be lower than the national averages for other communities.

This is something Dilawar Syed, a Pakistani American, and Indian-American investment banker Shekar Narasimhan hope to change through their organisation, the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Victory Fund (AAPIVF) - a group that aims to mobilise and elevate voices from these communities in local and national politics.

"He [Mr Syed] has access to different networks that I didn't," said Mr Narasimhan, explaining that he wanted to work with Mr Syed precisely because he hailed from a different community and lives in another part of the US.

Their group endorsed Democratic candidate Joe Biden for presidency in January. The two men believe that Mr Biden's victory will lead to a "more equal, just" America.

Read the full story here.