The trial of a man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump while he played golf is due to begin today. 

Ryan Routh, 59, was arrested after a rifle was seen poking through bushes at Mr Trump‘s West Palm Beach golf course in Florida on 15 September last year.

The incident occurred weeks after a bullet grazed the president’s ear in another assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Routh, who faces the prospect of life in prison, has pleaded not guilty to all five charges against him. He has also opted to defend himself in court – an unusual move that legal experts say could add an unpredictable element to the trial.

Here is all you need to know as legal proceedings begin in Fort Pierce, Florida.

What did Routh allegedly do?

Prosecutors allege Routh, a construction worker from North Carolina, was “lying in wait” with a rifle near the sixth hole of the Florida golf course when Mr Trump was playing.

A Secret Service agent, who was patrolling the course ahead of Mr Trump, spotted a rifle barrel coming out of a perimeter fence.

After seeing Routh, the agent opened fire, causing him to flee the scene in a black Nissan SUV. He was later arrested on a motorway about 46 miles from the golf course.

Mr Trump was uninjured in the incident, and there is no evidence that Routh fired his weapon at the golf course.

Months before his arrest, Routh allegedly wrote a note signalling his intention to kill the president.

The note, which was left in a box at the house of an unidentified person, was headlined “Dear World” and allegedly said: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you.”

A handwritten list of dates and locations where Mr Trump was expected to be was also found on him, according to prosecutors.

What are the charges?

Routh is facing five felony counts in relation to the alleged assassination attempt. They include:

• Attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate;
• Possessing a firearm to carry out a violent crime;
• Assaulting a federal officer;
• Felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition;
• Possession of a firearm with an obliterated (removed) serial number.

In addition to the federal charges, Routh also has pleaded not guilty to state charges of terrorism and attempted murder.

How will the trial unfold?

The trial will begin on 8 September with the selection of the jury. Lawyers aim to find 12 jurors and four alternates, with the process expected to last three days.

Opening statements are then scheduled to begin on Thursday 11 September, and prosecutors will begin their case immediately after that.

Prosecutors will have to convince a jury that Routh both intended to kill Mr Trump and took a substantial step toward doing so.

Mr Trump is not expected to attend court or give evidence.

The court has scheduled four weeks for the trial, but lawyers expect it will not last that long.

Why is Routh defending himself?

Routh, who has no formal legal training, is set to deliver opening and closing statements, question witnesses and present evidence on his own behalf.

In a letter to US district judge, Aileen Cannon, Routh said it was “ridiculous” to consider a “random stranger that knows nothing of who I am to speak for me”.

He added: “Best I walk alone.”

Routh’s two former lawyers will serve as “standby counsel,” where they can provide him with advice if called upon. He will also face strict limits on his ability to deliver political or ideological arguments at trial.

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Criminal defendants have a legal right to self-representation, but experts say Routh’s decision increases the chance of legal risks.

“If his sole goal is to be acquitted, then his chances probably go down,” Erica Hashimoto, a law professor at Georgetown University, said.

“If he has something else that he’s trying to do by going to trial, then representing himself may be the only way to do that.”

Who is the judge?

District judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Mr Trump during his first term, is presiding over the case.

She also oversaw the criminal case accusing Mr Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents, a case which she threw out, to the consternation of Trump critics.

Ms Cannon has already ruled that some of Routh’s prior writings, which he sought to show the jury, cannot be presented as evidence.

She has also ordered against him using witness testimony as a “tool for calculated chaos”.

It comes as Routh previously suggested trading himself for a prisoner held by China or Iran, and unsuccessfully attempted to subpoena (order to court) Mr Trump himself, according to The New York Times.

Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants – by posting an AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.

There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.

That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.

The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Mr Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Pentagon as the Department of War.

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote in a post on X, responding to Mr Trump’s post.

“This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

Mr Pritzker previously said that he believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend.

Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or cancelled over the threatened stings.

A military deployment in Chicago has long been reported. Last month, the Pentagon was said to be drafting plans to send the US Army to Illinois.

In a statement responding to that report, originally from The Washington Post, Mr Pritzker said the state had “made no requests for federal intervention” and accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.

Vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday that there were “no immediate plans” to send the National Guard to Chicago.

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ICE arrests 475 Hyundai workers

On Thursday, ICE agents carried out a raid at a Hyundai car battery plant in Georgia, saying 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were found to be illegally working there.

It marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

The day after the raid, ICE posted a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus.

South Korean junior foreign minister Park Yoon-joo told a US government official in a phone call that the video release was regrettable.

Seoul’s foreign ministry added the post came “at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and cooperation” between the two countries, forged through their first summit, “must be maintained”.

Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.

Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.

In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.

Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.

And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.

He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…

“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”

Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.

Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.

Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.

His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.

Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.

And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’

The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.

Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.

As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.

He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”

At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?

Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?

“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.

Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.

He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.

A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.

“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”

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And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.

“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.

“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”

The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.

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They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.

With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.