A new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll — conducted across battleground states after last week’s Democratic National Convention — “found Kamala Harris has narrowed or reversed Donald Trump’s advantage on key economic issues and established herself as more trusted than her rival to protect personal freedoms.”

“Harris now leads by 2 percentage points among registered voters across the seven states. She is ahead by 1 point — a statistical tie — among likely voters, a group that campaigns and pollsters begin to shift their attention to as election day nears. The statistical margin of error is 1 percentage point across the seven states.”

“Compared with her predecessor atop the Democratic ticket, President Joe Biden, Harris has opened up new possibilities for an Electoral College victory by putting Sun Belt swing states like Georgia and Nevada back in play.”

Kamala Harris told CNN that she would want a Republican in her Cabinet.

Said Harris: “It’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican.”

Donald Trump told NBC News that if elected, his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization but would have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of the expensive service for American women who need it.

Said Trump: “We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment. We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday offered her most expansive explanation to date on why she’s changed some of her positions on fracking and immigration, telling CNN her values haven’t shifted but that her time as vice president provided new perspective on some of the country’s most pressing issues.

“Kamala Harris has stepped out of the shadow of her role as the Biden administration vice president and has established herself as a candidate who voters view largely in positive terms, giving her a narrow lead in the presidential election against Donald Trump,” a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.

“Harris had 48% support to Trump’s 47% in a head-to-head test of the two candidates, and she led by 2 points, 47% to 45%, on a ballot that included independent and third-party candidates, according to the poll, which was conducted after Democrats concluded their televised national convention.”

“The leads in both matchups fell within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.”

“Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has enjoyed an unusually friendly public rapport in recent days with former president Donald Trump,” the Washington Post reports.

“But the détente might not last. Kemp is now weighing whether state law requires him to get involved in a simmering controversy around the Georgia State Election Board, whose conservative majority is under fire for approving new rules this month that Trump supports but that state and local officials say will sow confusion, compromise ballot security and potentially enable rogue county boards to block certification of election results in November.”

“Senator Jack Reed, the West Point graduate, Army veteran and Rhode Island Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, is hardly known as a troublemaker prone to rash statements,” the New York Times reports.

“So when Senate Democrats gathered privately with President Biden’s top political advisers last month to assess Mr. Biden’s capacity to remain the Democratic presidential nominee, the decision by the normally taciturn Mr. Reed to be among the first to speak was notable. What was even more remarkable was what he said, according to two attendees: If Mr. Biden wanted to stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance that underscored concerns about his condition and mental acuity, he should submit to examination by two independent neurologists who were willing to report their findings at a news conference.”

“It was a striking position for a Democratic loyalist to take, and one that underscored the near unanimity among Senate Democrats in the room that day that Mr. Biden should not continue as the party’s nominee. It was just one of a series of extraordinary moments during a closed-door session on July 11 that would lead Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, to schedule a face-to-face meeting with the president days later in which he urged Mr. Biden to withdraw.”

Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will remain on the ballot for North Carolina’s general election, the state decided Thursday, WBTV reports.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds Kamala Harris just ahead of Donald Trump in the presidential race, 49% to 47%.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver each receiving one percent support.

Said pollster Tim Malloy: “Conventions done, debates in the planning, rhetoric getting rougher, there’s a slight numerical difference, but it is essentially a tie as the presidential race roars toward November 5th.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) urged tech billionaire Peter Thiel to “get off the sidelines” and help bankroll Donald Trump’s presidential bid in a Financial Times interview.

Said Vance: “I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that — you know he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president.”

He added: “He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.”

Nate Silver: “Harris is ahead by 3.8 points in our national poll tracker — up from 2.3 points the day before the Democratic Convention began — which does suggest some sort of convention bounce. However, she’s fallen to a 47.3 percent chance of winning the Electoral College versus 52.4 percent for Donald Trump. (The numbers don’t add to 100 because of the possibility of an Electoral College deadlock.)  Some of this is because of the convention bounce adjustment that the model applies to polls that were conducted during or after the DNC. It assumes Harris’s polls are somewhat inflated right now, in other words — just as it assumed Trump’s numbers were inflated after the RNC.”

“While there’s a solid basis for this empirically, you could argue we’re under unusual circumstances because of her late entry into the race. So if you want to treat all of this as a little fuzzier than usual, I don’t really mind that. The good news for Harris is that if she merely holds her current numbers for a couple more weeks, she’ll begin to track up again in our forecast as the model will become more confident that she’s out of the convention bounce period.”

“There’s another, longer-term concern for Harris, though: it’s been a while since we’ve seen a poll showing her ahead in Pennsylvania, which is the tipping-point state more than a third of time in our model. Today, in fact, we added one post-DNC poll showing Pennsylvania as a tie, and another (conducted during the DNC) showing either a tie or Trump +1, depending on what version you prefer.”

“The most disqualifying thing about Donald Trump is that he does or says something disqualifying every day.”

— Windsor Mann, on X.

“Next month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won’t have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren’t speaking, or written notes, according to rules that ABC News, the host network, shared this week with both campaigns,” the AP reports.

“The Harris campaign on Thursday insisted it was still discussing the muting of mics with ABC.”