TODAY’S WEATHER

🌦️ A bright start for Glasgow and Edinburgh will quickly fade into a wet day for both cities. Aberdeen should remain dry. London will start off dry, but see rain later. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Trump declares a “dark moment for America” after ally is killed | Time to end “not proven” in Scotland, says minister | Starmer under pressure on Mandelson

📣 The assassination of Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has plunged American politics into turmoil. Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was killed by a single bullet at a Utah college event. A suspect - who has not been found - was seen running from a nearby rooftop after Kirk was shot in the neck while he spoke to a large crowd at Utah Valley University.

The death brought an angry reaction from Trump, who described him as “a great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” on social media. He also posted that “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie”. (AP) (Truth Social)

Later, in a video posted online, Trump called his death a “dark moment for America,” adding: "It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible." (Fox News) (Mail)

• Killing of Trump ally lays bare America’s bloody and broken politics (BBC)

• Charlie Kirk’s death shows political violence is now a feature of US life (Guardian)

• Charlie Kirk, and why he mattered in American politics - below ⬇️

📣 Scotland’s controversial “not proven” verdict should be scrapped “in the interests of justice,” according to Justice Minister Angela Constance.

MSPs will vote on a bill next week to remove the third verdict, which campaigners have said gives juries a “get out” and allows the guilty to walk free. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

• The not proven verdicts that rocked Scotland (Daily Record)

📣 Sir Keir Starmer is facing pressure to sack US ambassador Lord Mandelson, after fresh revelations about his links to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

It has emerged that Mandelson “coached” Epstein while he was facing criminal charges in 2008. Lord Mandelson told the BBC: "I relied on assurances of his innocence that turned out later to be horrendously false." (The Sun had the exclusive) (BBC)

IDEAS
Charlie Kirk, and why he mattered in American politics

🗣️Charlie Kirk’s name may have been lesser-known on this side of the Atlantic before his murder. But, in the US, he was a star, especially among the young, especially on the right, where he had worked himself into a position of huge influence. Indeed, as the New York Times puts it today (🎁gift link), he had become “something of a kingmaker” by the end of last year.

How did he get there? He was a product of America’s vast, cash-soaked political culture, a figure who used his charm and digital media know-how to propel himself into the orbit of the powerful. He did that principally by founding Turning Point USA, now the pre-eminent US conservative youth organisation, when he was 18.

A young Kirk had found inspiration, and his political motivation, in Rush Limbaugh, the godfather of conservative talk radio, to whom he listened during school lunchtimes. He later found support - and cash - from Republican grandees keen to see the party’s message spread among the young.

The organisation Kirk built was, in its way, a successor to old-fashioned talk radio. Today, it has chapters at more than 850 colleges, where it organises and motivates the right.

Kirk made himself a media star, brilliantly effective at using social media to make himself a spokesman for populist, patriotic “Christian conservatism” that set itself squarely against Islam and the left, and combining that online fame with tours across American college campuses, and glitzy bigger events.

He deployed all the rhetoric and tricks of the age to whip up the crowds. As David Smith writes in a profile in the Guardian, he deployed “misinformation, divisive rhetoric and conspiracy theories, including 2020 election-fraud claims and falsehoods around the Covid pandemic and the vaccine.

“Kirk expressed openly bigoted views and was an unabashed homophobe and Islamophobe. As recently as Tuesday of this week he tweeted: ‘Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.’”

He was an essential figure in the election of Donald Trump, despite never holding office, working in the White House or holding a formal position on a political campaign’s staff.

“He had been an early champion of selecting Senator JD Vance of Ohio as Mr. Trump’s running mate,” Clay Risen writes in the New York Times. “Several of his biggest donors received positions in the Trump administration.”

He was so close to Donald Trump the US President had come to view him as one of his closest allies, and he was a close friend of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. A profile of Kirk - “the youth whisperer of the American right” (🎁gift link) - made it clear that Trump, and others around him, attributed his victory over Kamala Harris in no small measure to Kirk’s work.

He was lauded for his intelligence, for his expertise in history and the Bible and for his acute political instincts. As the Economist puts it this morning (£), his influence “stemmed from his reputation as a tribune of the right, someone who was unafraid to defend conservatism against an imagined horde of blinkered libtards.”

Young Conservatives held him in high regard. Among TikTok users under 30 who voted for Mr Trump in 2024, Mr Kirk was the most trusted individual on the platform.

“Mr Kirk was bellicose and fiery on the stump,” it notes, “reflecting an age defined by partisan rancour. Americans’ growing mistrust of and even hatred for their political opponents has been accompanied by a disturbing increase in assaults, near-misses and threats in recent years.”

Americans might overwhelmingly reject political violence, the newspaper notes. “But in a country awash with guns, it only takes one person to commit a heinous, attention-grabbing act.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 John Swinney says there’s a “real chance” of a trade deal for Scotch whisky after his whistlestop visit to the United States. (BBC)

📣 Scotland’s worst mobile phone reception blackspots have been revealed: some of our most tourist-friendly and picturesque areas have been identified as lacking coverage. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Staff at three Scottish universities are on strike today: staff at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and the University of the West of Scotland are on strike over plans to cut hundreds of jobs, while staff at the University of Edinburgh continue their five days of action - started on Monday - over budget cuts. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Donald Trump offered an “ambiguous” initial response to Russia’s drone incursion into Poland’s airspace, in an act that is now being interpreted as a provocation designed to test NATO’s reaction. (AP)

📣 A furious Qatar has accused Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a “narcissistic saboteur-in-chief” determined to wreck the chances of peace in the Middle East. The comments, made by a foreign ministry spokesman, came after Israel bombed Doha on Tuesday. (The Independent has the exclusive)

• A search for bodies continues at the site of the attack in Doha (BBC)

📣 Prince Harry met King Charles for “private tea” in their first meeting in almost two years. (Mirror)

📣 It was the National Television Awards last night - the big story was the Ant and Dec didn’t win the Best Presenter awards for the first time in 23 years. The honour went to Gary Lineker instead. (The Sun)

• Who were the winners and losers? (The Mirror)

SPORT

⚽️ Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers will be talking to Daizen Maeda to see “where Celtic’s main striker’s head is at” after he said he wanted to leave. He’s due back in Glasgow today after international duty for Japan. (The Sun)

⚽️ Nico Raskin is said to be back in the Rangers fold after meeting manager Russell Martin, but the Belgium international - who scored for his nation this week - has been told he’ll have to earn his place in Martin’s misfiring side. (Sun)

• Barry Ferguson: I know how Martin is feeling, but he’s hit the point of no excuses (Daily Record)

• Rangers have been fined €20,000 and handed a one-match away fans ban - suspended for two years - after a huge pyrotechnic display set off during their 6-0 defeat to Club Burgge in Belgium last month. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Jim Goodwin has been handed a new 12-month rolling contract by Dundee United, the manager saying his side are “only scratching the surface of what we can achieve together”. (BBC)