TOPEKA, Kan. >> Republican legislators in Kansas enacted what may be the most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the U.S. on Thursday, overriding the Democratic governor’s veto of the measure without having a clear idea of how their new law will be enforced.

The vote in the House was 84-40, giving supporters exactly the two-thirds majority they needed to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s action. The vote in the Senate on Wednesday was 28-12, and the new law will take effect July 1.

At least eight other states have enacted laws preventing transgender people from using the restrooms associated with their gender identities, but most of them apply to schools. The Kansas law applies also to locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

“When I go out in public, like I’m at a restaurant or up on campus or whatever, and I need to go to the bathroom, there’s definitely going to be a voice in my head that says, ‘”Am I going to get harassed for that?’” said Jenna Bellemere, a 20-year-old transgender University of Kansas student. “It just makes it so much more complicated and risky and unnecessarily difficult.”

Republican legislators argued they’re responding to people’s concerns about transgender women sharing bathrooms, locker rooms and other spaces with cisgender women and girls. They promised the bill would prevent that.

Fighters rampage as Sudan extends truce

CAIRO >> Armed fighters rampaged through a city in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur on Thursday, battling each other and looting shops and homes, residents said. The violence came despite the extension of a fragile truce between Sudan’s two top generals, whose power struggle has killed hundreds.

The mayhem in the Darfur city of Genena pointed to how the rival generals’ fight for control in the capital, Khartoum, was spiraling into violence in other parts of Sudan.

The two sides accepted a 72-hour extension of the truce late Thursday. The cease-fire has not stopped the fighting but created enough of a lull for tens of thousands of Sudanese to flee to safer areas and for foreign nations to evacuate thousands of their citizens by land, air and sea.

The cease-fire has brought a significant easing of fighting in Khartoum and its neighboring city Omdurman for the first time since the military and a rival paramilitary force began clashing on April 15.

U.S. imposes new sanctions on Russia, Iran

The Biden administration is imposing sanctions on Russian and Iranian intelligence services and individuals for their roles in wrongfully detaining Americans, senior administration officials said.

The new measures, announced Thursday, target Russia’s Federal Security Service and the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as four individuals associated with the Iranian group.

The sanctioned individuals are Commander Mohammad Kazemi, Co-Deputy Chief Mohamad Mehdi Sayyari, Co-Deputy Chief Brigadier General Mohammad Hasan Mohagheghi, and Counterintelligence official Ruhollah Bazghandi.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order last July aimed at boosting efforts to bring hostages and wrongfully detained U.S. nationals home. The sanctions are being imposed under authority granted in that order.

Fox News ratings tumble in Carlson slot

NEW YORK >> Hundreds of thousands of Fox News viewers are reacting to Tucker Carlson’s firing by abandoning the network in his old time slot — at least temporarily.

Fox drew 1.33 million viewers for substitute host Brian Kilmeade in the 8 p.m. Eastern hour on Wednesday night, putting the network second to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in a competition Carlson used to dominate, the Nielsen company said.

That’s down 56% from the 3.05 million viewers Carlson reached last Wednesday, Nielsen said. For all of 2022, Carlson averaged 3.03 million viewers, second only to Fox’s “The Five” as the most popular program on cable television.

Carlson offered his own alternative to Kilmeade on Wednesday, posting a two-minute monologue on Twitter at 8 p.m. By Thursday afternoon, that video had been viewed 62.7 million times, according to Twitter.

Kilmeade had 1.7 million viewers on Tuesday and 2.59 million on Monday, when he told people who hadn’t already heard the news that Carlson would no longer be there.

Mont. trans lawmaker carries on despite exile

HELENA, Mont. >> Montana transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr spent her first day in legislative exile Thursday relegated to a bench in a noisy hallway across from a snack bar outside the state House chambers where she is no longer allowed.

Zephyr defiantly stayed put even after the Republican House speaker said she couldn’t be there and a House security officer threatened to move the bench where she had set up her laptop. She listened to debate and voted remotely from there, with a gold sticky note on the wall above her head that read “Seat 31,” her seat assignment in the house. The note was placed there by transgender and nonbinary Rep. SJ Howell.

Republicans had wanted Zephyr to participate from behind the doors of the House Minority’s offices a day after they voted to ban her from the House floor for the rest of the session, which ends early next week.

Trump focuses on Biden rematch in speech

MANCHESTER, N.H. >> Former President Donald Trump turned his attention to the general election on Thursday, using his first campaign appearance since President Joe Biden launched his own reelection bid to boast of his poll numbers and suggest that he has no need to debate his Republican rivals.

Trump’s appearance in New Hampshire marked his first return to an early voting state since his legal troubles increased with an indictment in New York. He spoke on the same day that his former vice president, Mike Pence, testified before a federal grand jury investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. Meanwhile, writer E. Jean Carroll testified for a second day Thursday in a civil rape case against Trump over an encounter in the 1990s, an allegation he denies.

“We are a nation in serious decline, a nation that has lost its way,” Trump said at a downtown Manchester hotel, a smaller venue than his typical, large-scale rallies. “We are led by a hopeless person, but we will win in 2024 and make America great again. We can do it. It’s not too late.”

In a nod toward his 2016 race, Trump said he’s retiring the “crooked” nickname he used to define Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and will now instead apply it to Biden.

— From news services