The latest on the 2020 election

Former President Barack Obama criticized President Trump this afternoon during a campaign event for Joe Biden in Philadelphia, saying the President has treated his tenure "like a reality show he can use to get attention."

Obama, who wore a mask with "VOTE" on it before making his speech, also spoke at lengths about how Americans can vote through mail and in-person on Nov. 3.

"We've got 13 days. That's our lucky number. Thirteen days until the most important election of our lifetimes," Obama said. "What we do these next 13 days will matter for decades to come."

Watch the moment:

Businessman Andrew Yang will join Young Americans for Biden and youth-focused organizations Student Debt Crisis and Rise, as well as the student loan start-up Savi, for a town hall and phone bank Wednesday.

Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate and CNN contributor, ran on a platform that emphasized Universal Basic Income and student debt relief for young Americans.

During the virtual event with Yang, Student Debt Crisis, Rise and Savi will announce the launch of a new joint initiative between the groups, which includes a student loan education tool and hotline for student loan borrowers.

"With 45 million student loan borrowers, it’s a massive bloc of voters who could easily tip the election and Rise’s work with Student Debt Crisis is the first concerted effort to define 'student loan voter' as a category with political power," Rise CEO Maxwell Lubin told CNN.

In September, Rise and Student Debt Crisis teamed up to endorse the Biden-Harris ticket. Wednesday's virtual event with Yang marks the first time the student-focused groups will partner with Savi.

Rise, a student-led advocacy group with chapters on college campuses across the country, has mobilized more than 80,000 students in battle ground states with a get out the vote campaign since the summer, Lubin said. 

Student Debt Crisis is a national organization dedicated to teaching young people how to manage their student loans. They regularly hold clinics to help young people understand their loans and work nationally to reform student debt and higher education policies. 

More than 40 million Americans have already cast their general election ballots, according to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.

Voters in the 47 states and DC with pre-Election Day data available are already setting records as they seek to cast their ballots either by mail or in-person where available less than two weeks before Election Day.

Ballots cast so far represents almost 30% of the more than 136 million total ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Some voter information comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving new insights into who is voting before November.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN he has already voted in this year's election but he wouldn’t say if he voted for Joe Biden or wrote someone else in.

Kamala Harris rallied Democrats at an early voter mobilization event in Asheville, North Carolina — this event was rescheduled from last week after the Biden-Harris campaign halted travel because of two positive Covid-19 cases.

There were about 25 people in the crowd, many stood in socially distant circles in front of a mountain vista. And most raised their hands when asked if they had already early voted. 

Harris delivered brief remarks, eliciting “boos” and “call him out” from the small crowd, when she — without naming him —  called out Sen. Thom Tillis and GOP senators for trying to push through a Supreme Court nominee instead of passing another stimulus bill.

“You know who I’m talking about,” Harris said.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee gave her usual stump speech, with a mention of getting rid of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which again elicited some boos from the crowd.

Harris said she would be counting on the people of North Carolina, and made no mention of Democratic senate candidate Cal Cunningham in her remarks.

More than two million voters in the state have already successfully cast their ballots for the election.

No matter who wins the US presidential contest in November, one of the most pressing problems for the administration to solve will be America's broken jobs market.

In fact, the unemployment rate, which peaked at 14.7% in April may actually under-represent the fragility of America's pandemic labor market: Those discouraged by a lack of available jobs, worried about health precautions or needing to stay home to care for children or elderly relatives have dropped out of the labor force altogether. And the unemployment rate doesn't factor them in.

If we add back all the people who have dropped out of the labor force since February -— many of whom are women — and count them as unemployed, the jobless rate would have been 10.3% last month, the S&P report said.

The unemployment rate isn't expected to get back to its pre-pandemic level before 2024. Come January, the administration needs to throw a lifeline to those in need, Bovino said.

Read the full story here.

Ahead of their final debate, President Trump is tweeting dire and unfounded predictions for Americans should his Democratic rival win the White House.

“Your 401k’s will crash with Biden. Massive Biden Tax and Regulation increases will destroy all that you have built! Additionally, 180 Million People will lose their Private Healthcare Plans,” Trump warned, without evidence, Wednesday morning. He wrote that Biden would “raise your taxes at a level never seen before.”

Biden has said repeatedly that his tax plan would only raise taxes for those earning more than $400,000 a year. You can read more about his tax plan here.

“This will not only be very costly for you, it will destroy our economy, which is coming back very rapidly,” he claimed.

Trump has sent numerous tweets this morning, including claiming without evidence that “California is never in play for Republicans” because of “rigged” elections. There is no evidence this is true and there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud is an issue at all in the US.

A member of the Commission on Presidential Debates said President Trump's attacks on the commission are "just wrong," a rare rebuke coming from a member of an organization that strives to stay neutral.

Trump has repeatedly attacked debate moderators and the commission, falsely claiming during an interview on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday that his matchup with former Vice President Joe Biden this week is "so set up," even though the debate topics and moderator were agreed to by both campaigns weeks ago.

Danforth noted that like other members of the commission he has maintained a "strict vow of silence" regarding personal feelings about the campaign, but now that the President and his supporters "have attacked the commission's integrity, I feel compelled to respond."

Mentioning Trump's attacks on Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who moderated the first presidential debate, Trump campaign senior adviser Steve Cortes accused the commission in a tweet of a "scheme to protect their preferred candidate" -- Biden.

Read more here.

John King reports:

More than 5.3 million people cast their vote in Texas, including the first eight days of early voting, according to data posted on the Texas Secretary of State website Wednesday morning. That represents a little more than 31% of registered voters. 

On Tuesday, 519,696 people voted in person, bringing the total in-person votes to more than 4.6 million. Cumulative ballots-by-mail so far this cycle were 698,599.

Comparing early voting data from 2016 can be complicated for multiple reasons, in addition to the pandemic. Texas has three weeks of in-person early voting this cycle compared to two weeks in 2016. The state is also tracking early voting data from all 254 counties this cycle, but it only collected data from the top 15 most populous counties in 2016. 

Still, when looking at the data from the first eight days of early voting in the top five most populous counties in both cycles, turnout has increased by 375,540 in those counties -- an increase of about 20%. It's worth noting that those counties represent 42% of all registered voters.