Kamala Harris is looking to keep her momentum with voters going, after yesterday conducting the first interview of her presidential bid with CNN, alongside her running mate Tim Walz. Her campaign has announced plans for an abortion-focused bus tour that will crisscross swing states, while Georgia is reportedly seeing a surge in registrations by new voters, particularly among the groups most likely to vote for Democrats. Speaking of abortion, Donald Trump yesterday said he supported a ballot initiative to overturn Florida’s six-week ban on the procedure, but both his campaign and running mate JD Vance are trying to walk back the comment, underscoring the perils of the GOP’s position on the issue.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Trump also broke with years of Republican orthodoxy by saying he wouldn’t move to block abortion access in Washington DC, and told supporters he wanted the government or private insurance to pay for IVF care.

• Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, apologized after his campaign used images of Trump’s visit to Arlington national cemetery this week – which the former president has refused to do.

• House Republicans will travel to southern California for a judiciary committee hearing that will likely be aimed at Harris and her stance on undocumented migration.

NBC News asked Donald Trump about his campaign’s decision to use images of his visit to Arlington national cemetery in communications to supporters, including on TikTok.

He downplayed the controversial decision, saying, essentially, that they were just pictures:

Meanwhile, outrage continues over Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington national cemetery on Monday, during which one of his staffers pushed aside a cemetery employee who tried to prevent them from shooting pictures and video in an area where doing so was prohibited.

While the former president’s campaign has forcefully rejected criticism of their conduct, their indignation was not shared by Utah governor Spencer Cox, who joined Trump during the visit.

In a post on X, he apologized for using images of the cemetery, where American war dead are buried, in a campaign email:

In further evidence that Donald Trump isn’t quite sure how to balance his party’s longstanding opposition to abortion with concerns that many voters favor continued access to the procedure, the former president yesterday spoke out against Florida’s abortion ban, leaving his campaign to clean up his comments.

Florida, where Trump lives, bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and voters in November will decide whether to pass a measure guaranteeing a right to the procedure until fetal viability, which is usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy. NBC News yesterday asked Trump how he’d vote on the measure. He replied:

I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.

That didn’t sit well with his campaign, who quickly moved to walk back the former president’s comments, the Associated Press reports:

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the rally Thursday that Trump “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida” known as Amendment 4 and that he “simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.”

His comments nonetheless drew immediate reaction from those who oppose abortion rights, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who said she had spoken with Trump after his speech.

“He has not committed to how he will vote on Amendment 4. President Trump has consistently opposed abortions after five months of pregnancy. Amendment 4 would allow abortion past this point. Voting for Amendment 4 completely undermines his position,” she said, adding that, “anyone who believes in drawing a different line” still “must vote against Amendment 4, unless they don’t want a line at all.”

There’s been a sharp increase in people registering to vote in Georgia in the weeks since Kamala Harris launched her campaign, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, with groups that tend to back Democrats making up a large part of the new registrants.

It could be a good sign for the vice-president’s campaign in a state where Democrats reversed years of election losses in 2020, when Joe Biden won its electoral votes and the party’s candidates captured both of its Senate seats.

Here’s more from the Journal-Constitution on the registration trends:

Black women led the surge, with a 75% jump in registrations compared with the same 3 1/2 week period in 2020, according to the most recent voter registration data available from the Georgia secretary of state’s office, stretching from July 21 to Aug. 13.

Sign-ups by Hispanic voters grew by an even larger percentage, 114% over the 2020 period, though the raw number of new registrations was lower than other racial groups because there are fewer Hispanic voters overall in the state.

And new voters under 30 years old spiked by 76%. Overall, 50% more voters have registered since July 21 than in the same period four years ago.

“It’s shocking. I did not expect to see something of this scope,” said Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data company TARA Group. “This has the potential to be a game changer in terms of the presidential race.”

Bonier’s research also found similar leaps in 13 other states since Harris joined the race, and he said Georgia’s growth in registrations reinforces an emerging national trend.

More than 46,000 people have registered since July 21, bringing Georgia’s total number of voters to 8.1 million. So far this year, 226,000 new voters have registered.

Reproductive rights has been a major vulnerability for Republicans nationwide ever since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago and allowed states to ban the procedure. As the president who appointed three of the justices who supported that ruling, Donald Trump has been no exception, and he’s lately tried to execute something of a pivot on the issue.

Politico reports that the former president has signaled support for abortion access in Washington DC, going against years of attempts by the GOP to use Congress’s unique oversight of the capital to restrict the procedure in its city limits.

And, yesterday, he told NBC News that he would support requiring the government or private insurers to pay for IVF for families. He also said that he would not back restrictions on the care – which Democrats have accused the GOP of wanting to do, after Alabama’s supreme court earlier this year handed down a ruling that cut off access.

Here’s more on what Trump said, from NBC:

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

Asked to clarify whether the government would pay for IVF services or whether insurance companies would do so, Trump reiterated that one option would be to have insurance companies pay “under a mandate, yes.”

Abortion and IVF have been political liabilities for the GOP this year. Democrats have blasted Republicans over IVF in recent months, saying GOP-led restrictions on abortion could lead to restrictions on IVF, as well.

In a statement, Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said that “Donald Trump’s own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide” and that “because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, IVF is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country. There is only one candidate in this race who trusts women and will protect our freedom to make our own health care decisions: Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz yesterday sat for their first joint interview since launching their campaign, and outlined some of the policies they’d bring to the White House, if elected. Now, they’re looking to press the advantage over Donald Trump and JD Vance that polls continue to indicate they may have, particularly on issues of reproductive health. Their campaign this morning announced a bus tour through swing states that will focus on promoting her policies towards IVF access and abortion, and feature prominent surrogates including Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

We continue to see signs that Harris and Walz are posing a much stiffer challenge to Trump than Joe Biden did. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll published yesterday shows Harris with the advantage in all seven swing states it surveyed, even North Carolina, which hasn’t supported a Democrat since 2008. That said, it’s only one poll, and others have shown her in a weaker position with voters in these states, most notably Pennsylvania, which is viewed as perhaps the deciding state this election.

Here’s what else we’re watching today:

• Despite his role in the overturning of Roe v Wade and his party’s pursuit of abortion restrictions nationwide, Trump tried to remake himself into a supporter of reproductive rights at a rally yesterday.

• We will hear more from Trump today, who will campaign in Johnstown, Pennsylvania at 4.30pm ET, and speak at a conference of conservative group Moms for Liberty at 8pm.

• Harris is back in Washington DC, and has no public events scheduled today. Expect speculation to grow in the coming days over when she will sit for her next interview.