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ROME (AP) — Pope Francis demanded Sunday that humanitarian aid reach hungry people in the war-torn Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, where Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers are blocking food deliveries and other assistance.

Francis called for an immediate end to the fighting in Tigray, the return of social harmony and for “all food aid and health care assistance to be guaranteed.”

Speaking at his Sunday noon blessing, Francis said he was thinking of the people of Tigray who have been “struck by a grave humanitarian crisis that has exposed the poorest to famine. Today there is famine! There is hunger!”

The United Nations and aid groups say more than 350,000 people in Tigray face famine and 2 million more are a step away from the worst famine since 2011 in Somalia. Farmers, aid workers and local officials say food has been turned into a weapon of war, with soldiers blocking or stealing food aid.

More than 2 million of Tigray’s 6 million people have already fled, unable to harvest their crops. The war in Tigray started in November, shortly before the harvest season, as an attempt by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to disarm the region’s rebellious leaders.

On one side are guerrillas loyal to the ousted and now-fugitive leaders of Tigray. On the other are Ethiopian government troops, allied troops from neighboring Eritrea and militias from Ethiopia’s Amhara ethnic group who see themselves as rivals to the Tigrayan guerillas.

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The Latest on soccer’s European Championship:

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Denzel Dumfries rescued the Netherlands with a goal in the 85th minute to give his team a 3-2 win over Ukraine at the European Championship.

The Dutch had lead 2-0 with a pair of goals early in the second half but Ukraine scored two late goals to equalize.

Dumfries then headed in a cross from Nathan Ake to get the victory. He had missed a similar chance in the first half.

The Netherlands was playing at a major soccer tournament for the first time in seven years.

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Fans in Amsterdam for the European Championship match between the Netherlands and Ukraine have expressed their support for Christian Eriksen following his collapse on Saturday.

Eriksen played at the stadium from 2010-13 when he was with Ajax. He moved from there to Tottenham and is now with Inter Milan.

Denmark’s team doctor says Eriksen’s heart stopped and that “he was gone” before being resuscitated during the team’s match against Finland in Copenhagen.

Two orange-clad fans held a sign saying “Eriksen Stay Strong” next to a picture of a heart and his No. 10 Denmark shirt.

The fans in the stadium cheered as screens showed a message in Dutch saying “Get well Christian.”

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Belgium coach Roberto Martinez is weighing up whether to start Eden Hazard against Denmark on Thursday in the teams’ second group game at the European Championship.

Hazard is coming off an injury-disrupted season with Real Madrid and entered as a 71st-minute substitute in Belgium’s 3-0 win over Russia on Saturday.

Martinez was impressed with Hazard’s contribution at Saint Petersburg Stadium and says the national team captain “is ready to play longer.”

Martinez says he’s not sure if Hazard will start or come on later because he doesn’t think “he can play 90 minutes.”

Martinez also says defensive midfielder Axel Witsel will play some part in the match in Copenhagen after four months out because of a torn Achilles tendon injury and a late decision will be taken on the availability of Kevin De Bruyne and Jan Vertonghen.

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Michael Gregoritsch and Marko Arnautović came off the bench to score a goal each and help Austria beat North Macedonia 3-1 at the European Championship.

It was Austria’s first win at a major soccer tournament in 31 years and it’s first ever at the European Championship.

David Alaba curled in a precise cross from the left in the 78th minute for Gregoritsch to score the winner. Arnautović calmly added the third with a minute to go.

Stefan Lainer had given Austria the lead but North Macedonia captain Goran Pandev equalized.

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Austria right back Stefan Lainer celebrated his goal at the European Championship with a message for Christian Eriksen.

Lainer held up a white shirt he was thrown from the bench with the message “Eriksen, stay strong” written on it after giving his team a 1-0 lead over North Macedonia in Bucharest.

The supporters of both teams applauded before the game when the giant screen above the field displayed the message “Best Wishes Christian.”

Eriksen collapsed on the field while playing for Denmark on Saturday. He is still in the hospital in Copenhagen but in stable condition.

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A soccer fan has been taken to a London hospital in serious condition after falling from the stands at Wembley Stadium during England’s 1-0 victory over Croatia at the European Championship.

The English Football Association says officials are working with “UEFA to ensure the matter is fully investigated and we are continuing to monitor the situation.”

The English FA owns Wembley.

The incident was said to have happened just after kickoff. No other details were given.

Wembley says the spectator “was given on-site medical attention and was then taken to hospital in a serious condition.”

UEFA confirmed the incident but declined further comment citing privacy reasons.

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Sweden coach Jan Andersson says midfielders Jens Cajuste and Albin Ekdal are expected to be available for the team’s opener against Spain in the European Championship on Monday.

Both players had been sidelined recently because of injuries. Ekdal didn’t participate in Saturday’s training session because of a knock he received earlier in the week. Cajuste had to leave the session with what team doctor Jonas Werner said was a “slightly twisted ankle.”

Andersson says all 24 players are available for the team’s final training session. He says a final evaluation on all players would be made before Monday’s match at La Cartuja Stadium in Seville.

Sweden is certain to be without midfielder Mattias Svanberg because of a positive coronavirus test result. The other Swedish player who tested positive was Dejan Kulusevski. Spain is without captain Sergio Busquets because of a positive COVID-19 result.

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England midfielder Jude Bellingham has become the youngest player to appear at a European Championship.

Bellingham is 17 years, 349 days. He came on as a substitute in the 82nd minute in England’s 1-0 victory over Croatia.

The previous youngest player was Jetro Willems. He was 18 when he played for the Netherlands at Euro 2012.

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Raheem Sterling scored his first tournament goal to give England a 1-0 victory over Croatia at the European Championship.

It’s the first time England has opened the continental tournament with a win in 10 attempts.

Sterling got on the end of a throughball from Kalvin Phillips and slipped it into the net via a touch off Croatia goalkeeper Dominik Livaković in the 57th minute at Wembley Stadium.

Sterling grew up in the shadow of the north London stadium where eight games at the Euro 2020 tournament will be played. They include the semifinals and final.

The Manchester City forward had not previously scored at the World Cups in 2014 and 2018 and Euro 2016.

England’s next game in Group D is against Scotland on Friday. Croatia will play the Czech Republic.

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Czech Republic coach Jaroslav Šilhavý doesn’t believe there are any hard feelings between Scotland and his team after a racist incident involving Slavia Prague defender Ondřej Kúdela and Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara.

Scotland and the Czech Republic will play their first Group D match in the European Championship on Monday at Hampden Park in Glasgow.

Kúdela is appealing against a 10-match ban for racially abusing Kamara in a Europa League match in March. Kamara is Black.

Šilhavý says “I don’t believe there is any animosity. We don’t feel any animosity against Scotland and I believe everything on the pitch tomorrow will be fair play.”

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Denmark team doctor Morten Boesen says Christian Eriksen suffered cardiac arrest and that ”he was gone” before he was resuscitated.

Boesen led the work in giving Eriksen CPR after he collapsed during Denmark’s European Championship game against Finland on Saturday. Boesen says ”we got him back after one defib. That’s quite fast.”

Eriksen is in stable condition in a Copenhagen hospital.

Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmand says he spoken to Eriksen via video link and says it was ”good to see him smile.”

Hjulmand says Eriksen was more concerned about his teammates’ well being and asked how they were doing.

Hjulmand says ”that’s typical Christian.”

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Defender Joao Cancelo has been removed from the Portugal squad after testing positive for the coronavirus ahead of the team’s European Championship opener against Hungary.

The team says the Manchester City player tested positive in a test taken Saturday. He has been placed in isolation.

Portugal coach Fernando Santos replaced him with Diogo Dalot for the game in Budapest on Tuesday. Dalot played for Portugal last week in the final of the European Under-21 championship. The Portuguese lost to Germany 1-0.

Players cannot be added back into a Euro 2020 squad after they are removed.

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Czech Republic players are not planning to take a knee ahead of their European Championship games.

The national team says the players will instead be showing their support for racial justice by pointing to the UEFA Respect sign on the left sleeve of their jersey. The team already did that ahead of a World Cup qualifier against Wales in March.

Czech Republic coach Jaroslav Šilhavý says the team wants to fully focus on the game.

Šilhavý says he understands it’s an important topic for society “and my team and I condemn any form of racism.”

The Czechs say they believe there’s no place for politics and political gestures in sports but they understand the topic will “resonate” during Euro 2020.

The Czechs will play their opening match in Glasgow against Scotland on Monday and then face Croatia in the same city before playing England at Wembley Stadium in London.

The Czechs are missing defender Ondřej Kúdela. The Slavia Prague player received a 10-match ban for racially abusing Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara during a Europa League game in March.

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Sections of fans at Wembley Stadium have booed England players for taking a knee before the European Championship game against Croatia.

The boos came despite pleas from the team to respect the anti-racism gesture.

Croatia’s players did not take a knee.

The English Football Associated told fans ahead of the game that the team is taking a knee “as a mechanism of peacefully protesting against discrimination, injustice and inequality. This is personally important to the players and the values the team collectively represents.”

Some fans claim taking a knee is a political act but the FA says “English football has made it very clear that it does not view this as being aligned to a political organisation or ideology.”

The jeering was by some fans who also chanted “No surrender” during the national anthem. That’s a dated reference to the conflict endured for generations that saw Britain hit by Irish Republic Army terrorist attacks.

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Injured Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk has sent his teammates a message of encouragement ahead of their European Championship opener against Ukraine.

The Dutch are playing in their first major tournament since the 2014 World Cup but Van Dijk is missing it while recovering from a right knee injury he sustained in October while playing for Liverpool.

He wrote on Twitter “Good luck boys… Believe, enjoy and savour every moment. Stick together at all times, like we always do!”

Georginio Wijnaldum will serve as captain at Euro 2020. He says Van Dijk is still influential in the team despite his injury.

Wijnaldum says “he knows how important he is for us.”

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Soccer fans arriving at Wembley Stadium are being greeted by announcements saying they can show their vaccine certification for entry to see England’s opening European Championship game against Croatia.

The match is the first sports event in Britain to allow proof of having both vaccination shots for entry. The other option is to take a coronavirus test.

Vaccination status certification is shown via the National Health Service app.

Up to 22,500 fans are being allowed into the 90,000-capacity Wembley for the match. UEFA is hoping the permitted crowd will be increased before the final on July 11.

The Group D opener is the first England game with fans allowed at Wembley since November 2019.

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Former Denmark goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel has criticized the decision to resume Saturday’s European Championship game after Christian Eriksen collapsed on the field and needed CPR.

Schmeichel says it was ”a ridiculous decision” by the governing body of European soccer to complete the game between Denmark and Finland. The Euro 2020 match was suspended for about 90 minutes after Eriksen needed lengthy medical treatment before being taken to a hospital. Finland eventually won 1-0.

Governing body UEFA gave Denmark the option to resume playing on Sunday but the team chose to complete the game Saturday.

Schmeichel tells BBC Radio Five live that UEFA should have worked out ”a different scenario and shown a little bit of compassion.”

Schmeichel’s son is Denmark goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.

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The Danish soccer federation says Christian Eriksen has ”sent his greetings to his teammates” and continues to be examined in a hospital following his collapse on the field during a European Championship game.

The Danish federation says Eriksen remains in stable condition. It says the players and staff have received crisis assistance ”and will continue to be there for each other after yesterday’s incident.”

Eriksen fell face-forward to the ground late in the first half and needed CPR from medical staff before regaining consciousness.

The game was suspended for about 90 minutes before resuming. Finland eventually won 1-0.

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Christian Eriksen remains in a Copenhagen hospital as he recovers after collapsing during Denmark’s game against Finland at the European Championship.

The Danish team canceled all planned media activities at its base camp and also postponed a training session to give its players more time process Saturday’s incident. Eriksen fell face-forward to the ground late in the first half and needed CPR from medical staff before regaining consciousness.

The game was suspended for about 90 minutes before resuming. Finland eventually won 1-0.

Eriksen was being treated at one of Denmark’s top hospitals. Rigshospitalet is less than a mile from Parken Stadium in Copenhagen.

There have been no recent updates on Eriksen’s condition.

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A rematch from the World Cup semifinals will be first up on Day 3 of the European Championship when England takes on Croatia.

The Croats won that match three years ago in Russia. But England will be playing at home this time at Wembley Stadium in London.

Austria and North Macedonia will play in the middle match in Bucharest. The two teams weren’t able to hold their training sessions at the National Arena on Saturday because a downpour soaked the field. North Macedonia is making its debut at a major soccer tournament.

The final match will be between the Netherlands and Ukraine in Amsterdam. The Dutch haven’t played at a major tournament since reaching the semifinals at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s parliament on Sunday narrowly approved a new coalition government, ending the historic 12-year rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sending the polarizing leader into the opposition.

Naftali Bennett, a former ally of Netanyahu turned rival, became prime minister after the 60-59 vote. Promising to try to heal a divided nation, Bennett will preside over a diverse and fragile coalition comprised of eight parties with deep ideological differences.

But the 71-year-old Netanyahu made clear he has no intention of exiting the political stage. “If it is destined for us to be in the opposition, we will do it with our backs straight until we topple this dangerous government and return to lead the country,” he said.

The vote, capping a stormy parliamentary session, ended a two-year cycle of political paralysis in which the country held four deadlocked elections. Those votes focused largely on Netanyahu’s divisive rule and his fitness to remain in office while on trial for corruption charges.

To his supporters, Netanyahu is a global statesman uniquely capable of leading the country through its many security challenges.

But to his critics, he has become a polarizing and autocratic leader who used divide-and-rule tactics to aggravate the many rifts in Israeli society. Those include tensions between Jews and Arabs, and within the Jewish majority between his religious and nationalist base and his more secular and dovish opponents.

Outside the Knesset, hundreds of protesters watching the vote on a large screen erupted into applause when the new government was approved. Thousands of people, many waving Israeli flags, celebrated in central Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square.

President Joe Biden quickly congratulated the new government.

“I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations,” he said in a statement. He said his administration is fully committed to working with the new government “to advance security, stability, and peace for Israelis, Palestinians, and people throughout the broader region.”

Bennett’s office said he later spoke by phone with Biden, thanking him for his warm wishes and longstanding commitment to Israel’s security.

The leaders agreed to consult closely on all matters related to regional security, including Iran, the White House said, adding that Biden said his administration intends to work closely with the Israeli government on advancing peace, security and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians.

Much of the Israeli opposition to Netanyahu was personal. Three of the eight parties in the new government, including Bennett’s Yamina, are headed by former Netanyahu allies who share his hard-line ideology but had deep personal disputes with him.

Bennett, 49, is a former chief of staff to Netanyahu whose small party is popular with religious Jews and West Bank settlers. As he addressed the raucous debate, he was repeatedly heckled and shouted down by Netanyahu’s supporters. Some were removed from the chamber.

Bennett, an observant Jew, noted the Jewish people twice lost their homeland in biblical times due to bitter infighting.

“This time, at the decisive moment, we have taken responsibility,” he said. “To continue on in this way — more elections, more hatred, more vitriolic posts on Facebook — is just not an option. Therefore we stopped the train, a moment before it barreled into the abyss.”

The new Cabinet met briefly, and Bennett recited a prayer for new beginnings and said it was time to mend rifts. “Citizens of Israel are all looking to us now, and the burden of proof is upon us,” Bennett said.

The millionaire former high-tech entrepreneur faces a tough test maintaining an unwieldy coalition from the political right, left and center.

The coalition, including a small Islamist faction that is making history as the first Arab party to sit in a coalition, agree on little beyond their opposition to Netanyahu. They are likely to pursue a modest agenda that seeks to reduce tensions with the Palestinians and maintain good relations with the U.S. without launching any major initiatives.

“We will forge forward on that which we agree — and there is much we agree on, transport, education and so on, and what separates us we will leave to the side,” Bennett said. He also promised a “new page” in relations with Israel’s Arab sector.

Israel’s Arab citizens make up about 20% of the population but have suffered from discrimination, poverty and lack of opportunities. Netanyahu has often tried portray Arab politicians as terrorist sympathizers, though he also courted the same Arab party in a failed effort to remain in power after March 23 elections.

Bennett, who like Netanyahu opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, made little mention of the Palestinians beyond threatening a tough response to violence. He also vowed, like Netanyahu, to oppose U.S.-led efforts to restore the international nuclear accord with Iran.

“Israel will not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons,” he said. “Israel is not party to the agreement and will maintain full freedom to act.”

But he also thanked Biden for his support of Israel. He promised to take a different approach than Netanyahu, who has alienated much of the Democratic Party through his antagonistic relationship with then-President Barack Obama and close ties with former President Donald Trump.

“My government will make an effort to deepen and nurture relations with our friends in both parties — bipartisan,” Bennett said. “If there are disputes, we will manage them with fundamental trust and mutual respect.”

While Bennett’s speech was conciliatory, Netanyahu’s was confrontational. He boasted of his achievements, including diplomatic treaties with four Arab states and a successful coronavirus vaccination drive, before belittling the man who is replacing him.

He accused Bennett of abandoning Israel’s right-wing electorate and joining weak “leftists” to become prime minister. He said Bennett did not have the backbone to stand up to Iran or pressure from the U.S. to make concessions to the Palestinians.

“I will lead you in the daily struggle against this evil and dangerous leftist government in order to topple it,” he said. “God willing, it will happen a lot faster than what you think.”

In the opposition, Netanyahu remains head of the largest party in parliament. The new coalition is a patchwork of small and midsize parties that could collapse if any of its members decide to bolt. Bennett’s party, for instance, holds just six seats in the 120-seat parliament.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the new government will likely be more stable than it appears.

Each party in the coalition will want to prove that it can deliver. For that, they need “time and achievements,” he said. Still, Netanyahu “will continue to cast a shadow,” Plesner said.

The driving force behind the coalition is Yair Lapid, a political centrist who will become prime minister in two years in a rotation agreement with Bennett, if the government lasts.

Lapid called off a planned speech, saying he was ashamed his 86-year-old mother had to witness the raucous behavior of his opponents.

“I wanted her to be proud of the democratic process in Israel. Instead she, along with every citizen of Israel, is ashamed of you and remembers clearly why it’s time to replace you,” he said.

Netanyahu’s place in Israeli history is secure, having served as prime minister for a total of 15 years — more than any other, including the country’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion.

But his reputation as a political magician has faded — particularly since he was indicted in 2019 for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes.

He refused calls to step down, instead lashing out at the media, judiciary and law enforcement, going so far as to accuse his political opponents of orchestrating an attempted coup. Last year, protesters began holding weekly rallies across the country calling on him to resign.

Netanyahu remains popular among the hard-line nationalists who dominate Israeli politics, but he could soon face a leadership challenge from within his own party. A less polarizing Likud leader would stand a good chance of assembling the right-wing coalition that Netanyahu had hoped to form.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — When Minnesota Republican Tyler Kistner announced his candidacy for the U.S. House in April, he asked voters to ponder two questions: “What America will we leave for our children?” and “Will they be taught to hate their police?”

Across the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, Republicans in the 3rd Congressional District aired a digital ad this spring to demand that their Democratic congressman “stand up to attacks on law enforcement.”

And in Iowa, a Republican governor who had promised additional checks on police conduct after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer plans to sign a law making it harder for police to be sued on the job.

As rising murder rates gain attention in American cities, Republicans have ramped up a misleading campaign to cast Democrats as anti-police and lax on public safety. It’s a message they believe helped them stave off greater Democratic gains in last year’s elections and one with renewed potency as cities consider cuts to department budgets as part of an effort to revamp policing.

It’s not at all clear that the GOP strategy, which stretches back to President Richard Nixon and was used by President Donald Trump, is a winning one. But it may be prominent as Republicans search for ways to gain ground in suburban areas critical to winning control of the U.S. House next year.

A recent special election in New Mexico wasn’t a good sign for the strategy. GOP candidate Mark Moore used Albuquerque’s rising crime and city officials’ decision to create an alternative public safety department to hit Democrat Melanie Stansbury. But Stansbury won easily, with a larger share of the district’s votes than President Joe Biden garnered last year.

Stansbury’s district is overwhelmingly Democratic, making it an imperfect test case. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House campaign arm, believes the issue will have a larger impact in swing districts, where the party plans to tie moderate Democratic incumbents to their more liberal colleagues who have supported the “defund the police” movement. That term is used to describe diverting money from police budgets to other social services, such as mental health support and drug addiction mitigation.

The GOP focus is on places such as Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, where 13-term Democratic incumbent Ron Kind is being cast as insufficiently supportive of law enforcement, though he does not support defunding police departments.

It also includes Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, who beat Kistner in 2020 and represents the Minneapolis and St. Paul suburbs where rioting broke out last year after Floyd’s death.

Since then, several cities have struggled with the police funding debate, while experiencing rising gun violence.

The NRCC chair, U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, said he believes the message will resonate with voters because “crime is rising in America, yet Democrats still support the dangerous idea of defunding the police.”

Neither statement is fully accurate.

It’s true that violent crime has risen. The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System recorded 25% more homicides in 2020 than in 2019, and 12% more violent assaults. But the increase in homicides is nationwide, including in some cities that increased police spending and in some cities led by Republicans.

Other crimes such as burglaries, drug offenses and other categories, however, have decreased.

It also is not accurate to describe Democrats as uniformly supportive of “defund the police” efforts.

The Democratic-controlled House passed a sweeping police overhaul bill in March that did not include a provision to allow diverting money away from police departments. Kind was one of only two Democrats to oppose the bill. He said it did not include sufficient protections for police. Craig voted for the measure.

The bill has stalled in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans oppose it.

Like Emmer, U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tried to preemptively blame Democrats — in this case, Biden — for what McCarthy claimed is widespread rising crime caused by cuts to police budgets.

“We are concerned about whether the Biden Administration is prepared to address the surge of violent crime in American cities,” McCarthy wrote in a letter Friday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

It’s a noticeable shift in tone from a year ago, when many Republicans across GOP-led states briefly joined with Democrats to ban specific physical restraints and require tighter scrutiny on police in the tumultuous aftermath of Floyd’s death.

In Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said last June while signing a bill banning chokeholds: “This is not the end of our work. It is just a beginning.”

A year later, Reynolds’ proposed racial profiling ban quietly died in the GOP-controlled Legislature. Lawmakers passed a crime bill giving police greater protection from lawsuits and cracking down on protesters. Reynolds plans to sign the measure Thursday.

Republicans in other states have made it harder for cities to cut police budgets. The Republican-led legislature in Missouri made it easier this year for cities to be sued for approving deep cuts in police budgets. Similar laws were adopted in Florida, Georgia and Texas.

The change from a year ago reflects the general unpopularity of cutting police spending, especially in pivotal suburban areas, North Carolina-based Republican pollster Paul Shumaker said.

Though most racial justice demonstrations were peaceful, some scenes of violence and property damage left a lasting image and were highlighted in Republican campaign ads.

A majority of Americans support progressive criminal justice proposals such as programs to help people released from prison transition into society and changes in sentencing laws to allow probation or shorter prison sentences for some first-time convictions, according to a May poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll also found that about 6 in 10 Americans oppose reducing funding for law enforcement agencies.

The Democrats’ policing bill passed the U.S. House without a single GOP vote. It would ban chokeholds and end qualified immunity from lawsuits against police officers, while creating national policing standards in an effort to bolster accountability.

The bill does not back defunding police departments, and Democrats didn’t even debate the idea, in part because swing-district representatives such as U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who opposes defunding police, raised concerns about the political backlash.

Shumaker found the issue brought some independents who were unhappy with Trump’s pandemic response and had fallen away from supporting Republicans back into the GOP’s ranks last fall in parts of suburban North Carolina, including outside Charlotte and Raleigh.

“The defund the police movement gave Republicans a foundation to go back and repair some of the erosion with those suburban voters that was created by the coronavirus,” Shumaker said.

It’s not clear how crime will figure in the mix of issues in next fall’s elections. The nation is now just emerging from a year of political battles over COVID-19, recovering from the economic fallout and getting a handle on Biden’s agenda to rebuild the economy.

In an interview outside Richmond, Virginia, this past week, Spanberger said the message on crime can help Republicans unless Democrats speak up.

“It’s always going to be difficult when a simple message is easy to gin up anxiety,” Spanberger said. “It becomes difficult to counter that. But it takes a lot of effort.”

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AP Director of Public Opinion Research Emily Swanson in Washington and Associated Press writer Steven Sloan in Maidens, Virginia, contributed to this report.

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School districts across the United States are hiring additional teachers in anticipation of what will be one of the largest kindergarten classes ever as enrollment rebounds following the coronavirus pandemic.

As they await the arrival next fall of students who sat out the current school year, educators are also bracing for many students to be less prepared than usual due to lower preschool attendance rates.

“The job of the kindergarten teacher just got a lot harder,” said Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. He coauthored a report that found that the number of 4-year-olds participating in preschool fell from 71% before the pandemic to 54% during the pandemic, with poor children much less likely to attend in-person.

Kindergarten is not required in most states, and in normal times, parents sometimes “red-shirt” children who would be young for their kindergarten class to give them an extra year of developmental readiness. This year, even children nowhere near the cutoff age were held out of school because of health concerns and the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Among them was the daughter of Christina Neu, who held her back even though her daughter has a December birthday and already would be relatively old for her class because the entry cutoff is the end of August. Across Kansas, kindergarten enrollment fell by nearly 9%.

“There was a little bit of fear, not wanting her to have to deal with kind of an unknown there,” Neu said, adding that her eldest daughter, who is 8, had just been diagnosed before the pandemic with 26 different food allergies and her immune system already was in overdrive. “We wanted to make sure that as a family we were being smart and being safe.”

Neu, who works in retail in Wichita, Kansas, cooked with her daughters, bought educational workbooks and played educational games with them. She said she has no regrets but is apprehensive about the burden facing kindergarten teachers.

“I would be really concerned about stress and just the teacher getting everything done with a big class,” she said.

With large amounts of federal relief money available, school districts are taking a range of approaches to prepare.

In Orange County, Florida, there are estimates that the incoming kindergarten class will be 17% bigger than in fall 2020 and officials are planning a 5 1/2 week transition program this summer at some of its neediest schools.

In Minnesota, the St. Paul district is anticipating nearly 22% more kindergartners than in fall 2020. The district plans to do testing over the summer to identify any special needs that have been missed, such as vision problems and speech delays, said Lori Erickson, a veteran kindergarten teacher who now coordinates the district’s pre-kindergarten program.

She said the district also just learned it is getting more money to expand its jumpstart to kindergarten summer program, which will include a field trip to a strawberry patch and visits from a dancer and painter.

“The biggest thing on our radar is recognizing the trauma that has happened,” she said, adding that the district has various staffers “who are ready to rumble.”

It remains uncertain just how big kindergarten classes will be in the fall. The increase could be offset by parents who decide to wait an extra year to send 5-year-olds or opt for homeschooling because of safety concerns.

Regardless, education leaders say they expect to be addressing the effects of the pandemic for years.

Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Scott Elder said children who skipped kindergarten or were homeschooled last year may be a bit behind on their numbers and letters. The same goes for the kids who were enrolled and studied online, but couldn’t always connect or get support from parents.

“When people talk about learning loss and kids being behind, it won’t be a quick solution. That’s going to be a multi-year solution, but it will be solved,” Elder said.

In Connecticut, some school districts are targeting summer programs at incoming kindergartners who missed out on preschool. Irene Parisi, the state’s chief academic officer, said in an interview that districts are also using federal relief money to add staff to help out and training them that they need to adjust their expectations.

“It is important that teachers realize that the routines are going to be different than perhaps what you may have expected of learners in the past,” she said.

In the 900-student Freeman School District in Rockford, Washington, Superintendent Randy Russell just hired a new teacher as the district prepares to add a third kindergarten class. He said about one-third of the preschoolers and kindergarteners in the mostly rural district about 15 miles (24.14 kilometers) south of Spokane skipped this school year and that other districts around the region experienced similar drops.

But the upcoming school year has him encouraged: “Even if you do have a gap, it is going to be closed pretty quickly. We are just excited that we are going to get the kids back.”

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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Attanasio from Santa Fe, N.M.

Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

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