Republicans who were in contact with the White House during the deadly January 6 attack on Congress are standing by their statements calling for the president to take charge and call off his supporters, telling CNN that the ex-president was “derelict” in his duty to act in that moment.

The stunning condemnations come as many of the party’s most prominent leaders, like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, remain loyal to the former president.

"I thought there was only one person who could stop it and that was the President," one lawmaker described by CNN only as a “senior Republican” told the network. "I don't know that I can think of another situation that was as grave for the nation, or as affecting for the nation, where the President didn't say something."

The Biden administration has ended the Trump-era ban on US direct travel to Cuba, a move first announced last month that is part of a readjustment of the US’s policies towards Cuba, the socialst Caribbean nation.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the action was taken "in support of the Cuban people, and in the foreign policy interests of the United States". Cuba’s foreign ministry responded by condemning the ongoing US trade embargo, which is responsible for Cuba’s inabilty to import many goods from abroad.

Read more in The Independent from Alisha Rahaman Sarkar:

Donald Trump unleashed his latest attack against Liz Cheney on Saturday, telling a crowd in Jasper, Wyoming to vote for her primary challenger Harriet Hageman.

While doing so, he condemned the congresswoman for her service on the January 6 commission, the House select committee investigating the deadly attack on the United States Congress.

“As one of the nation’s leading proponents of the insurrection hoax, Liz Cheney has pushed a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical partisan narrative,” Mr Trump protested to his followers.

Read more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote an op-ed in Fox News calling for action on gun violence as he begins bipartisan negotiations with Republican senators.

Mr Murphy, who was sworn in weeks after the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, is the most outspoken Democratic senator when it comes to gun safety. Last week, after Salvador Ramos shot and killed 21 people in Uvalde, Texas, Mr Murphy gave a floor speech imploring the Senate to act.

Continue reading the fully story from Eric Garcia below.

Such a ruling would reverse nearly 50 years of precedent and allow Republican state governments to effectively outlaw abortion across a broad swath of the US, curtailing the rights of tens of millions of women. Yet legal scholars and civil rights pioneers say Alito’s arguments could also allow the Supreme Court to strike down major LGBT+ rights such as the right to gay marriage, the right of gay spouses to government benefits and recognition, and even the right to gay sex.

“I’m terrified and people should be terrified,” says Jim Obergefell, whose lawsuit against the state of Ohio led to the Supreme Court ruling that gay marriage was protected by the US Constitution.

Keep reading the full report from The Independent’s Io Dodd’s below.

Georgia‘s top elections official was expected to appear Thursday before a special grand jury investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to meddle in the 2020 election in the state.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was summoned to the Fulton County courthouse where the special grand jury has been meeting, according to a subpoena obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request. Other subpoenas seek documents and testimony from five other people in his office.

Trump directed his ire at Raffensperger after the fellow Republican refused to bend to pressure to overturn the votes that gave Democrat Joe Biden’ a narrow presidential election victory in Georgia. Raffensperger defeated a Trump-endorsed challenger in the Republican primary as he seeks reelection.

Continue reading the full story below.

A series of Trump-era restrictions were lifted by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday, including a ban that prevented US airlines and chartered flights from going to Cuban cities, excluding Havana.

The US transportation department issued the order after secretary of state Antony Blinken sent a letter asking it to revoke the restrictions.

“Scheduled and charter air services between the United States and Cuban airports may resume effective immediately,” Mr Blinken said in a statement.

Read more from The Independent’s Alisha Rahaman Sarkar below.

Conservatives are celebrating Wednesday’s verdict in the highly publicised defamation lawsuit between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, in which Mr Depp won $15m in damages.

“Believe all women... except Amber Heard,” wrote Donald Trump Jr, on social media.

The former president’s son said he hoped the defamation verdict against the “terrible” actress would “end the effective rabid femminist notion that all men are guilty before being proven innocent that we’ve seen as of late.”

Continue reading the full story from The Independent’s Josh Marcus below.

Edward Jacob Lang, a 25-year-old Capitol rioter from upstate New York charged with assaulting a police officer with a bat, made a call from jail to the right-wing network Real America’s Voice recently to continue to air his gripes about the charges being brought against him and other insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on 6 January in what they viewed as a protest against the 2020 presidential election results.

“The politicians that we elected, that inherently derive their power from the will of the people ... if a million people are outside Congress, protesting, saying, you know we want a recount of the election,” the 25-year-old said during a call from jail.

“The people that day just felt totally disenfranchised by the politicians that we elected,” he said, adding, “as we were peacefully protesting, we were assaulted and ambushed and Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol police force that day was out for blood.”

Listen to the full clip below.

Abortion providers and pro-choice advocates in Florida have filed a lawsuit in state court challenging the state’s ban on abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The state constitutional challenge comes as Americans wait for a decision from the US supreme court in a case involving a similar Mississippi law following a leaked draft opinion to overturn abortion protections from Roe v Wade.

A group of civil rights and reproductive health groups in Florida filed the lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood organisations and clinics in the state. The lawsuit argues that House Bill 5, which Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed into law in April, violates a state constitutional provision guaranteeing a right to privacy, “including the right to abortion”.

Alex Woodward has more.