Kentucky is lagging behind in the ‘competition for talent’ to lead its classrooms, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday in pushing for higher teacher pay as a way to overcome a shortage of educators.

He cited grim statistics in making his case for a 5% pay raise for teachers and other public school employees. Kentucky has 11,000 teacher vacancies and ranks 44th nationally in starting pay for teachers, he said.

The Democratic governor continued his call for the GOP-led legislature to reopen the state budget in coming weeks to pump more money into teacher salaries and other education priorities. Lawmakers reconvene next week to resume a legislative session that continues until late March.

‘It is time that the state steps up and does more to ensure that we can win this competition for talent,’ Beshear said in a speech at the state Capitol. ‘And knowing that every teacher is irreplaceable — and every time we lose one to some other opportunity that they likely take to better support their families — it’s our kids and our future that suffers.’

The governor’s pitch came as a coalition formed by the Kentucky Association of School Administrators unveiled its initial proposals to improve teacher recruitment and retention.

Republican state Rep. James Tipton, chairman of the House Education Committee, told the group that bills delving into the teacher shortage are being introduced this session. The legislative panel he leads is scheduled to review the issue next week.

The reasons behind the shortage of educators are multi-faceted and include funding, greater workloads, job burnout and student discipline issues, Tipton said.

‘We may not come up with all the solutions in this session,’ he said.

Lawrence County schools Superintendent Robbie Fletcher mentioned compensation and workplace conditions — including stress — as factors behind the teacher shortage. In his rural district, two teachers resigned late last year and both cited the need to earn more money, he said at Monday’s event.

‘If you ask superintendents across their district, it would be scary to know how many teachers are working a second, maybe even a third job, just to make ends meet,’ he said.

If the shortage isn’t resolved, the situation could become so dire that some districts are faced with having to consolidate schools because they lack enough teachers, Fletcher said.

The coalition called for a comprehensive study of Kentucky education. It urged policymakers to review teacher certification and qualification issues as well as financial incentives to recruit and retain educators. It recommended creation of a single ‘Be a Kentucky Teacher’ portal for teacher preparation, recruitment and applications. The group signaled it will consider follow-up recommendations for the 2024 legislative session when the next state budget is crafted.

Beshear, who is running for reelection this year, has consistently made improved teacher pay a policy priority. He said Monday that the state should dip into its vast budget surpluses to make it happen during this year’s 30-day legislative session, rather than wait for the 60-day session in 2024 — when the state’s next two-year budget will be passed.

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s a long session or a short session, our kids are worth us having the courage to take the actions that are necessary,’ the governor said. ‘And our teachers deserve so much more.’

Beshear has made state-funded preschool for 4-year-olds another education priority, but that proposal hasn’t made any headway with lawmakers.

Kentucky lawmakers have generally followed their own course in setting education policies. The budget they passed last year funded full-day kindergarten and poured money into teacher pensions and infrastructure. They increased the state’s main funding formula for K-12 schools, but the amount was hundreds of millions less than what Beshear proposed. Their budget left it up to local school districts to decide whether to use additional state funding to provide higher pay to teachers and other school staff. Most districts have awarded pay raises, Republicans say.

But the governor said more should be done. He noted Monday that Kentucky slipped from 42nd to 44th in starting teacher pay in the past year. The governor’s proposed pay increase would be in addition to any locally approved raises.

‘I’m pretty ashamed that Kentucky is 44th in the country in paying one of the most important positions that we ever ask anyone to take,’ Beshear said.

A top non-partisan political handicapper is forecasting that Democrats face a serious challenge holding on to four crucial Senate seats as they attempt to protect their razor-thin majority in the chamber in the 2024 elections.

The first Senate race ratings of the new cycle by Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics are the latest by a leading election handicapper to point to a rough road ahead for the Democrats.

Democrats flipped a GOP Senate seat in Pennsylvania in November’s midterm elections, and they currently hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber – which includes three independent senators who caucus with the Democratic conference.

But Republicans are energized by a very favorable Senate map in 2024, with Democrats defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs. Three of those seats are in red states former President Donald Trump easily carried over President Biden in 2020: Ohio, West Virginia and Montana. Five other Democratic seats are in key swing states narrowly carried by Biden in the 2020 presidential election: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Michigan, longtime Democratic Sen Debbie Stabenow announced she’ll retire after next year rather than seek re-election.

2024 BATTLE FOR THE SENATE HEATS UP AS THE GOP AIMS TO WIN BACK THE MAJORITY

According to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, three Democratic held seats are toss-ups while one is ranked as lean Republican.

‘Democrats are playing much more defense than Republicans,’ Kyle Kondik, Sabato’s Crystal Ball managing editor, highlighted. ‘Of the current Democratic seats, West Virginia starts as the clearest Republican takeover opportunity, with Arizona, Montana, and Ohio as Toss-ups.’

And Kondik notes that ‘the GOP has no Toss-up or Leans Republican seats to defend at the starting gate.’

Here are the four Democratic senators who face challenging re-elections.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia

Manchin, a former governor and moderate Democrat who hails from one-time Democratic leaning state that’s turned overwhelmingly red in recent cycles, has yet to announce if he’ll seek another term next year. Manchin won re-election in 2018 by three points in a state then-President Donald Trump carried by nearly 40 points two years later. Sabato’s Crystal Ball ranks this race as lean Republican.

‘It is fairly unusual for us to start an incumbent as an underdog, but we think it’s warranted in this instance,’ Kondik emphasized. 

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana

Tester, a farmer, three-term senator, and the only Democrat to hold statewide office in the red state of Montana, has yet to say if he’ll run for re-election in 2024. 

Trump carried Montana by 16 points in 2020 and Sabato’s Crystal Ball ranks this race a toss-up.

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio

Brown, who’s served nearly a half century as an elected state and federal office holder, has already said he’ll run next year for a fourth six-year term in the Senate.

Ohio, which was once a premiere general election battleground state, has shifted red in recent cycles, and this race is also ranked a toss-up.

‘Brown should be able to get at least some crossover support, but will that be enough to overcome a GOP margin of, say, 8 points for president (Trump’s margin in both 2016 and 2020)?’ Kondik wrote.

Republicans are already taking aim at all three senators. As Fox News first reported earlier this month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) launched a ‘retire or get fired’ digital campaign targeting Manchin, Tester, and Brown, and tying them to President Biden.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona

Sinema, a moderate Democratic lawmaker, last month announced she was leaving the party and registering as an Independent. Sinema has yet to announce if she’ll seek another term in 2024.

But she already faces a challenge from the left, as earlier this month progressive Rep. Ruben Gallego launched a bid for the Democratic Senate nomination in the key southwestern battleground.

‘The Arizona situation is fascinating, given the possibility of a true 3-way race,’ Kondik highlighted.

President Biden took to Twitter on Monday to promote his electric vehicle tax credit. However, while doing so, he attached a picture of himself in one that doesn’t even qualify for it. 

‘On my watch, the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified,’ Biden tweeted, with a picture of him in a GMC Hummer EV that ranges in cost from $87,000 to nearly $110,000 depending on the model.

‘And now, through a tax credit, you can get up to $7,500 on a new electric vehicle,’ he continued.

The Hummer EV is not eligible for the credit since SUVs and trucks must not exceed a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $80,000, according to the Internal Revenue Service. 

The Hummer EV is also far more than the median American salary. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans’ median weekly earnings were $1,085 per week in the fourth quarter of 2022. That figure would put the median American salary around $52,000 per year.

When asked about Biden promoting the pricey GMC Hummer EV that does not qualify for the tax credits, a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the president is committed to lowering electric vehicle costs.

‘President Biden is committed to lowering the cost of electric vehicles for all Americans and bringing more affordable electric vehicles onto the market,’ the spokesperson said. ‘The President’s Inflation Reduction Act lowers costs for Americans, including for electric vehicles and energy at home.’

The spokesperson also pointed to pictures of Biden driving the electric Jeep Wrangler and Ford F-150 Lightning, which qualify for the credits.

OVERSIGHT REPUBLICANS WARN BIDEN’S ELECTRIC VEHICLE PUSH WILL BENEFIT CHINA AND HURT AMERICAN JOBS 

Biden, meanwhile, has a history of promoting expensive electric vehicles. During a September Detroit auto show, Biden boarded a Cadillac LYRIQ, an electric SUV with a starting price of more than $60,000. 

‘You all know that I’m a car guy,’ Biden said at the event. ‘I’m here because the auto show and the vehicles here give me so many reasons to be optimistic about the future. I really mean it. Just looking at them and driving them, they just give me a sense of optimism although I like the speed too.’

‘We are rebuilding the economy, a clean energy economy, and we’re doing it from the bottom-up and the middle-out,’ he continued. 

Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributing reporting.

The Biden administration proposed a new rule expanding the availability of birth control on Monday by removing moral exemptions for providing contraceptive coverage. 

The draft rule also creates an ‘independent pathway’ for women to get access to birth control at no cost even if their employer objects to contraception on religious grounds. 

‘Now more than ever, access to and coverage of birth control is critical as the Biden-Harris Administration works to help ensure women everywhere can get the contraception they need, when they need it, and – thanks to the ACA – with no out-of-pocket cost,’ HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Monday. 

Under current rules finalized during the Trump administration in 2018, employers can completely remove themselves from contraceptive coverage while still allowing covered women to get access to birth control, but only if they sign the optional accommodation. 

The new rules released Monday would create a workaround that allows women to get access to birth control even if their objecting employer doesn’t sign the optional accommodation. 

‘The proposed rules seek to ensure broader access to contraceptive services by creating an independent pathway for individuals enrolled in plans arranged or offered by objecting entities to make their own choice to access contraceptive services directly through a willing contraceptive provider without any cost,’ the Department of Health and Human Services, which unveiled the rule alongside the Treasury and Labor departments, explained on Monday. 

Birth control has come under the microscope in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to regulate abortion. 

President Biden told Congress on Monday that his administration will end twin emergencies related to the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, 2023, more than three years after they were enacted. 

The COVID-19 national emergency is set to expire on March 1, while the public health emergency (PHE) will expire on April 11. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in a Statement of Administration Policy that Biden will extend both emergencies to May 11, at which point they will expire. 

‘An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system — for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,’ the OMB wrote. 

The statement came in response to two resolutions being brought to the House floor by Republicans this week that call for an immediate end to the emergencies. 

Letting the emergencies expire would also lift Title 42 immediately, which the OMB said Monday would ‘result in a substantial additional inflow of migrants at the Southwest border.’ 

The Biden administration has been trying to terminate Title 42, which the Trump administration put in place in March 2020 to allow immigration officials to quickly expel migrants on public health grounds. The Supreme Court temporarily halted Title 42’s termination last month, allowing the policy to remain in place until the court hears a challenge from Republican-led states.

A spokesperson for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., a sponsor of one of the resolutions that would bring an immediate end to the public health emergency, contested Monday that Title 42 is a separate authority. 

‘Any decision to end Title 42 is not tied to the PHE,’ Rodgers’ office said. ‘President Biden alone will be responsible for the decision to end Title 42.’

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who introduced a bill with 51 co-sponsors to end the emergency immediately, said the House will go ahead with the vote on Wednesday. 

‘There is no reason to wait. There is no reason to trust the Biden Regime,’ Gosar tweeted. 

More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID-19 over the past three years, according to the CDC, but cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been lower this winter than in 2021 and 2020. 

President Biden told CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ in September that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. 

‘The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over,’ Biden said in a televised interview. 

Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report. 

Two of the Senate’s chief negotiators from both sides of the aisle on police reform are still committed to trying to move legislation through Congress, but hopes of a bill being approved in both chambers remains slim. 

Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., both said Monday in the wake of the death of Tyre Nichols that they were still actively negotiating for police reform legislation. 

‘Sen. Scott has been working on police funding and reform for the better part of the last decade,’ a spokesperson for Scott told Fox News Digital. ‘He never left the negotiating table and has encouraged his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join him in his continued efforts to increase safety in our communities.’

A spokesperson for Booker told Fox News that he ‘has spent the past several days engaged in conversations with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and is considering all legislative options to raise the levels of transparency, accountability and professionalism in American policing,’ adding that he’s hopeful that his colleagues will ‘step up.’

The pair first introduced a set of reforms in 2021, along with then-Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., but those efforts were stalled in the Senate due to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats.

Scott at the time said that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ that Democrat colleagues walked away from the negotiation table during discussions that had been going on for months.

‘Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table,’ he said in a statement.

Booker said at that time that ‘on basic fundamental issues of police reform, we have gotten no support from Republicans, and I hope people understand this.’

While Democrats now have a slight majority in the Senate, any measure would still have to contend with a Republican-led House.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, all but shunned the idea of police reforms in an interview on Sunday.

In appearing on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Jordan was pressed on whether he supports renewed federal police reform.

‘I don’t know if there’s any law that can stop that evil that we saw,’ Jordan told host Chuck Todd.

‘What strikes me is just the lack of respect for human life. I don’t know that any law, any training, any reform is going to change … this man was handcuffed, they continued to beat him. And I was actually reminded, it’s hard to watch the whole thing, but as I watched it, I was reminded, we have a hearing probably two years ago when George Floyd’s brother came and testified before the Judiciary Committee, and it was one of those moments when fact and truth and emotion all came together.’

‘During the questioning portion of that hearing, he said, ‘Life is precious,’’ Jordan recalled. ‘And it was one of those moments that grabbed everyone in that hearing, both parties. The fact that we saw that these individuals, these five individuals, did not have any respect for life. And again, I don’t think that these five guys represent the vast, vast majority of law enforcement. But I don’t think that there’s anything we can do to stop the type of evil we saw in that video.’

Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace and Kelly Laco contributed to this report.

Both George Floyd’s family attorney and the former police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, argued Sunday that the fatal caught on camera beating of Tyre Nichols allegedly at the hands of five Black Memphis, Tennessee, police officers demonstrate America’s racially biased and ‘institutionalized police culture.’  

Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who notably secured the record $25 million civil settlement for the Floyd family from the city of Minneapolis while the trial for ex-officer Derek Chauvin was ongoing, appeared on ABC’s ‘The Week’ Sunday as he’s newly representing the Nichols’ family. 

Reacting to the recently released video footage, host Martha Raddatz noted how police reforms are already in place in Memphis requiring officers to intervene or de-escalate if another officer is using excessive force. Nichols and the five since-fired Memphis officers now charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault and other offenses, are all Black. 

‘As I’ve said, I believe it’s part of the institutionalized police culture that makes it somehow allowed that they can use this type of excessive force and brutality against people of color,’ Crump said. ‘And it doesn’t matter if the officers are Black, Hispanic, or white, it’s part of the culture, this biased culture that said this is allowed. And so just as much as those officers are responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols, so is the implicit, biased police culture that exists in America.’ 

‘It is not the race of the police officer that is the determinant factor whether they’re going to engage in excessive use of force, but it is the race of the citizen. And oftentimes, it’s the Black and Brown citizens that bear the brunt of the brutality,’ Crump added. ‘You don’t see videos of our White brothers and sisters who are unarmed having this type of excessive force levied against them.’ 

Crump said he has spoken to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about possibly reintroducing to Congress the George Floyd Justice in Police Act, which sought to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers. 

Jason Armstrong, who formerly served as Ferguson’s sixth chief in seven years following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, also appeared on ‘This Week.’ Now the current police chief of Apex, North Carolina, Armstrong was asked whether he believes the 2020 reforms implemented in Memphis could have prevented Nichols’ death. 

‘I do believe reforms and training can prevent this, but the number one deterrent to this is when police officers around the country see what’s going to happen to them when they participate in behavior such as this, and so these individuals were fired. These individuals were charged appropriately for their actions,’ Armstrong said. ‘Similarly, what we saw happen in Minneapolis with Derek Chauvin and his actions, and officers around the country seeing that this type of behavior is not going to be tolerated by law enforcement. It’s not going to be tolerated by the communities that they serve.’ 

‘But they have already seen what happened to a Derek Chauvin, and this happened. And they were wearing body cameras, yet they still behaved this way,’ Raddatz countered. 

To that, Armstrong admitted, ‘no matter what piece of equipment you give an officer, no matter if you have a body camera on them or people are watching, at the end of the day, you know, these are people.’ 

‘Unfortunately, violence is what was natural for these individuals in this instance,’ he added. ‘And that’s what we have to do as a better job as law enforcement leaders is identifying these individuals that are inside our organizations and our police departments, and getting them out of the profession before something like this happens. And that’s where the reforms really have to take place, and that’s where the reforms can really have an impact.’ 

Asked about racial bias, Armstrong argued even Black officers can be biased toward Black people. 

‘We see that racial bias across all forms. It’s not just in policing,’ he said. ‘That’s just something that our society deals with, unfortunately in this country. There have been plenty of studies, there are plenty of bias tests that — that people can take. And when you look and analyze the data from those tests, it shows that most people have a – a bias and a bias in particular towards Black and Brown individuals in this country, no matter if you’re White, Black, Hispanic, just like Mr. Crump alluded to.’ 

‘And so, knowing that we have these biases that we all carry around with us, and when we talk about the implicit bias trainers and things, it’s not — no training is going to – to completely dissipate someone’s bias that they have in them,’ Armstrong added. ‘You know, what we’re hoping individuals can learn is identifying their biases, so they learn better to work within them to whether they’re not having a negative impact on somebody else. And we have to take that emotion that we’re all dealing with right now, and we have to turn that into fuel and fuel that will lead us to see some change in this country.’