A former chief of staff at the US department of homeland security has admitted he was the author of an anonymous New York Times article in 2018 which described President Trump as "impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective".

Miles Taylor also said on Wednesday he was the author of the book A Warning published last year, which went on to criticise Trump as "undisciplined" and "amoral". Taylor resigned last year and supported Joe Biden.

At the time, Taylor had said members of the administration were working to frustrate parts of the president's agenda to protect the country from his "worst inclinations".

The op-ed said: "To be clear, ours is not the popular 'resistance' of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous."

The article sparked a frantic hunt amongst Trump's aides to find out the author's identity.

On Wednesday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said: “This low-level, disgruntled former staffer is a liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading."

Image source, Reuters

Trump is still speaking to a rally on the Arizona side of the border with Nevada.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Trump wished to have the event in Nevada but couldn't due to Covid-fighting measures enacted by the Democratic governor.

During the outdoor event, he riffed on the heavy wind, saying that it would have proven if his hair was fake, as critics have long claimed. After some time, he decided to don a Make America Great Again hat, saying it was to keep his hair from flopping around.

Trump claimed without offering evidence that Biden was "carried off the stage last night" and that Biden's wife appeared uncomfortable as she watched him speak in Atlanta.

"You can see she was under great great stress," Trump said. Trump has been regularly attacking Biden's stamina. The Democratic challenger has held far fewer events than Trump, due to an effort to control the spread of the pandemic.

At the event, Trump complained that his teleprompter was glitching and praised himself for not needing it anyway. After the microphone crackled he said: "Whoever did this microphone, don't pay them."

"You know I have a reputation for not paying. And it's a false representation.

"But when somebody does a lousy job with the microphone or with teleprompters that fly with the wind, we don't pay them."

Deanna Lusk is a legal assistant and moderate voter from the Midwest. After twice voting for Barack Obama, she voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Although she is not a fan of his style, she believes he has made decisions that have been beneficial to the country and plans to vote for him again on Election Day.

How does the issue of climate change impact your vote?

Biden’s latest comments on climate change are pivotal. He laid out a plan with regard to changes on fracking and the oil sector, and that was a big deal to a lot of people. The changes he’s going to try and make right away are going to negatively impact the economy. It’s probably going to take more than twenty years to make it right if he does make these changes.

For me, I feel like we now have a peek through the curtain that hides the circus. Kamala Harris wants the Green New Deal, which contains a lot of huge changes. I think Biden is just going to go along with other people's decisions.

Tell us about your plan to vote.

I plan to vote as I have always voted, at the polling station. I don’t understand what the panic is all about. I am not changing the way I vote and I will never change the way I vote, it should be protected.

These 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, Reuters

Trump is speaking now from Bullhead City, Arizona, which is near the Nevada border.

He begins by asking the audience who has come from Nevada and who is from Arizona. He then pledges to win both states.

"You're so lucky I am your president," he says to applause and chants of "USA".

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is also in Arizona. She will be speaking in Tucson, a city near the US-Mexico border. We will be bringing you updates from her speech shortly.

Christopher Giles
BBC Reality Check Anti-disinformation unit

Facebook has deleted several Trump campaign advertisements which predominately targeted swing states such as Florida and Arizona. The ads wrongly told thousands of voters: “Election Day Is Today” (it’s actually 3 November).

Facebook’s policy is to ban advertisements that give out the incorrect election day. It’s likely that the Trump campaign was seeking to get around another one of Facebook’s ad rules.

Here’s how it works:

Facebook announced a ban on all new adverts a week before election day, and for some time after. The new rule caused a flurry of ad activity.

Because Facebook decreed that if a candidate’s page posted an ad before midnight yesterday, it could continue to publish the same ad after the deadline.

It’s likely the Trump ads were designed to be pushed out more widely on 3 November.

Early voting has already begun in both Florida and Arizona, so eager citizens will not be disappointed if they visit their polling place this week.

The Trump camp was furious.

"This is election interference at the hands of the Silicon Valley Mafia, and it is dangerous for our democracy," Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary, said in a statement.

But the new rule hit both sides. Democratic campaigns reported difficulty posting ads and were told they were not permitted to post election day ads.

The Trump page also briefly published an ad declaring premature victory: “President Trump is STILL your president”. Facebook did not take any action.

Here are some of the key updates from the day:

• Tech executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter faced an over-three hour grilling from a Senate committee, but emerged relatively unscathed. Read our reports and analyses below
• "Well, we just voted," said Joe Biden, who cast his ballot in his hometown in Delaware with his wife
• Over 70m ballots are estimated to have already been submitted ahead of the 3 November election day
• President Donald Trump will be speaking at a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona shortly

President Donald Trump has tweeted once again - this time criticising press freedoms during a Senate hearing on how Facebook, Google and Twitter moderate content.

"The USA doesn’t have Freedom of the Press, we have Suppression of the Story, or just plain Fake News," he wrote in one message. "So much has been learned in the last two weeks about how corrupt our Media is, and now Big Tech, maybe even worse."

He then went on to accuse news outlets and technology companies of failing to cover what he described as "Biden corruption".

During Wednesday's hearing, Republican senators angrily condemned the decision by Twitter to delete links to a controversial article by the New York Post newspaper into alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Image source, Getty Images

On Tuesday, a former business associate of Hunter Biden told Fox News that he had met Joe Biden twice, despite previous denials from the former vice-president.

There has been no evidence that Biden did anything to intentionally benefit his son's business in Ukraine or China.

Find out more about the allegations against Hunter Biden here.

Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent

Image source, EPA

If the tech leaders had come to this hearing expecting a profound debate about Section 230 and possible amendments to it, they will have been disappointed.

This was a bitterly partisan three hours.

The Republicans used their time to focus on the perceived anti-conservative bias of the social media firms.

And the Democrats questioned whether the hearings should be taking place at all in the final days of an election campaign.

The tech chiefs have emerged relatively unscathed and will want to see what the next administration looks like before making any major moves.

But they will be under the spotlight as never before on election day itself, and immediately after if the result ends up being contested.

And this is by no means their last scheduled appearance on Capitol Hill, in any case.

Image source, Getty Images

Here's a bit more detail about those reports earlier that thousands of Trump supporters became stranded in the cold after a rally in Omaha, Nebraska.

"Supporters of the president were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight," Nebraska Democratic State Senator Megan Hunt tweeted, external, criticising the turn of events.

There were long queues to get into the rally at Eppley Airfield and buses were stuck in congestion unable to ferry people back and forth.

Some walked three miles to get back to their cars, and ambulances were called to provide medical attention for others who fell ill, reports NBC news., external

At least 30 people including an elderly man, an electric wheelchair user and a family with small children were among those who needed medical attention, the broadcaster says.

Image source, Reuters

Former President Barack Obama is to join Democratic candidate Joe Biden for an election event on Saturday.

Obama held his first in-person event on behalf his former vice-president in Philadelphia last week. He followed that up with a drive-in rally in the key state of Florida yesterday.

But Saturday's event will see the two men campaigning together and "discuss bringing Americans together to address the crises facing the country and win the battle for the soul of the nation", according to his campaign.

Leo Kelion
Technology desk editor

Three hours and 41 minutes after it began, the Senate Commerce Committee's cross-examination of the tech chief executives is at an end.

But there could be further questions to come - the senators have a further fortnight to pose follow-up queries, which the tech chiefs are supposed to respond to in writing.

There have been some heated exchanges, and acknowledgements from the tech chiefs that their teams could do better.

But it doesn't appear that there's any cross-party consensus on exactly what the problems that need to be fixed are, or how the Section 230 law that was supposed to be the focus of today's hearing should be changed.

However, this close to the election, it was unlikely that anything significant would be achieved.

And the tech chiefs are probably satisfied that they've survived another appearance on Capitol Hill without any serious amount of blood being drawn.

Image source, Reuters

Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his wife Jill have cast their ballots in their hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

President Donald Trump voted in Florida over the weekend.

More than 71 million Americans have already taken part in early voting - more than half the total turnout in 2016.

Leo Kelion
Technology desk editor

Image source, Reuters

Despite repeated denials by the chiefs of Google, Facebook and Twitter that they deliberately suppress conservative voices, Republican senators continue to question why it appears the tech firms are more likely to censor right-wing views than left-wing ones.

"You have every right to set your own terms of service," said Senator Mike Lee.

"But given the disparate impact of who gets censored on your platforms, it seems that you're either not enforcing your terms of service equally, or alternatively you're writing your standards to target conservative viewpoints."

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg insisted that it aimed to be fair and consistent, but acknowledged it did not always get it right.

"It's a big company, so I get that there are probably mistakes that are made from time to time," he said.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey made a similar point: "Anytime we find examples of bias in how people operate our systems or algorithms we remove it," he said.

"[But] we do need a much more straightforward and quick and efficient appeals process."

Even so, Republican Senator Rick Scott later returned to the point suggesting part of the problem was that the social networks were using "liberal media groups" to carry out some of their fact checks.

Responding to this, Mr Dorsey said Twitter does not have a general policy to tackle misinformation, but instead relies on its users to report it.

Facebook does use fact-checkers to add warning labels to some content - but it uses a range of groups, which are all certified via a non-partisan body, external.

Helier Cheung
BBC News

In between the news and views from the campaign trail, our theme in today's live page is climate change and the election.

So what does President Trump believe on climate change?

If you judge the president based on his words alone, his views can appear contradictory - and confusing.

While Trump has described himself as an "environmentalist" before, he tends to frame it in terms of clean air and water (which are not directly related to climate change).

And while the Trump administration's actions have widely rolled back on climate change measures, many Republicans have a different position.

A recent survey by the American Conservation Coalition, a group led by young Republicans who want more to be done on the environment, suggested that 68% of Republican respondents aged 18-54 considered climate change an issue important to their vote.

"While it’s unlikely that President Trump will suddenly transform his tone on climate change in the coming weeks, he and the Republican Party should aim to do so if they want to continue winning elections into the future," the group said, external.

Image source, Reuters

As part of our focus on climate change in the election today, what have the two candidates said about environmental issues so far?

From Donald Trump's claim that "we have the cleanest air, the cleanest water", to Joe Biden's policy on fracking, find out about their comments on these and other issues here.

As we've already reported, Republicans have doubled down on Twitter over what they see as censorship of conservative content online in today's Senate committee hearing.

The head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was grilled over his platform's decision to delete links to a controversial investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The move was based on a rule preventing users from sharing content acquired by hacking, although Dorsey said the policy was soon dropped.

But some Democrats have criticised the timing of today's session, which they see as an election ploy.

Image source, EPA

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was asked what steps it would take if President Trump tried to use the platform to claim victory before an official result had been declared.

Mark Zuckerberg said that such posts would not be deleted, but would have a note attached to them.

"If someone says that they've won the election when the result isn't in, for example, we will append a piece of information to that saying that official election results are not in yet," the Facebook chief said.

"If one of the candidates tries to prematurely declare victory or cite an incorrect result, we have a precaution built in," he added, explaining US-based users would be shown accurate information about the vote at the top of the Facebook app.

Mr Zuckerberg had worded his answer carefully so as not to suggest that Donald Trump was more likely of committing such an act than Joe Biden.

But Democratic senator Ed Markey pressed the issue with a follow-up question.

"If President Trump uses his Facebook account to call for armed private citizens to patrol the polls on election day... will you commit that your algorithms will not spread that content and that you will immediately take that content down?"

Mr Zuckerberg said that would indeed violate the firm's voter suppression policies and that such a post would be removed.

David Molloy
Technology reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Asked about foreign interference in the election, similar to Russian efforts in 2016, all three tech bosses said this was an ongoing problem.

“We do continue to see interference,” Mr Dorsey said, pointing to publicly-disclosed information, external about behaviour from Russia and Iran, among others.

Sundar Pichai also said Google was seeing ongoing “co-ordinated influence operations”.

One had targeted both Trump and Biden campaigns, he said.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said Iran and China were among countries it had seen such operations launched from.

And he revealed that US intelligence had warned the firm of specific threats.

They “suggested that we be on high alert... that if a trove of documents appeared, we should view that with suspicion," he explained.

"It might be part of a foreign manipulation attempt.”

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

It is less than a week until the election, and Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, is already thinking about the next one.

One of his fans in Fallon, Nevada, made a “Don Jr 2024” sign, and Don Jr spoke about it on a Fox & Friends on Tuesday. He was flattered, he said, but he has other priorities: getting his father re-elected.

Many liberals recoil at Don Jr’s public persona and his hobbies – guns and big-game hunting - yet he has a conservative fan base.

He, along with his sister Ivanka and his brother Eric, have also been successful in raising campaign money. Ivanka alone raised as much as $15m (£11.5m) in four fundraisers, according to CNN, external.

Among the president’s children (there are five), Don Jr has been the most outspoken about his plans for office – a dream that will be easier to fulfill if, as he points out, he helps his father remain in the White House for another term.

Read more about Donald Jr, the son who is Trumpier than Trump, here.

With just six days until the election, both campaigns are turning their attention to another swing state: Arizona.

President Donald Trump is holding rallies in Arizona's Bullhead City and Pheonix on Wednesday, while Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris attends drive-in events in Tucson and Phoenix - the latter featuring singer Alicia Keys.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, will be holding remote public health and finance events from his home state of Delaware.

Vice-President Mike Pence will travel to two other key states for rallies: Wisconsin and Michigan.