Truly, I am the country’s biggest fan. But in the spirit of free speech its leaders apparently love, here’s a few things the rest of the world needs them to know

We in the rest of the world have had to hear a lot – such a lot – about what this US government and its hardcore fanbase thinks about us. So you know they’ll be super-relaxed and free-speechy about hearing some thoughts about how they look from the outside. Let’s use last Saturday as a single snapshot. In Minneapolis, they had the shooting by ICE agents of a protesting nurse who posed no threat – an event promptly, provably and blatantly lied about at the highest level by Donald Trump’s politburo. Then that evening in Washington, a lot of those same politburocrats turned out for the White House premiere of a ridiculous propaganda film about the president’s wife, also attended fawningly by bloodless Apple oligarch Tim Cook. And he’s not even the oligarch who paid an insane amount for the film. Top line, guys: all this makes you look like what your president likes to call a “shithole country”. Sorry! I assume it’s fine to use officially licensed vocabulary?

Obviously, it’s not a proper shithole country until the soft-skinned puppetmasters in the presidential palace cut some grizzled local warlord off at the knees for following orders, so it’s good to learn overnight that border patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino has been pulled out of Minneapolis, possibly locked out of his social media accounts, and may soon “retire”, presumably a fall guy for the likes of stage 4 homeland security tumour Stephen Miller. Bovino’s the guy who’s literally got the same haircut and outfit as the Sean Penn character in One Battle After Another. But hey, at least he wears a uniform. Again, what are international outsiders to make of the spectacle of ICE’s federal officers coming masked and frequently dressed in civilian clothes, while images from protests across the States show resisting civilians increasingly drawn to military-style clothing? Can Trump’s storm detachment not at least be issued with matching shirts? They don’t have to be brown, but Maga chic desperately needs to make even a first step to getting itself together. In the entire history of the movement, only one follower – the QAnon shaman – has ever had true style.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

English clubs stroll through Champions League group phase but fatigue tends to take its toll by the spring

Has there been a great game in the Champions League group stage this season? Probably not. Even if there had been, it almost certainly didn’t mean all that much. But that’s the way of the modern game: an extremely protracted clearing of the throat before the real business begins.

Uefa will proudly tell the world that only six teams have nothing to play for in the final round of games on Wednesday, but whether it was worth 126 games to get to the mild peril of Napoli or Club Brugge possibly going out, or the questionable thrill of finding out whether Tottenham or Atalanta will have to endure the playoff round, is debatable.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basic they scrimp on? Ben Fogle talks to the Filter about vintage clothing, toothpaste and garden makeovers gone wrong

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Ben Fogle is an adventurer, broadcaster and bestselling author. He has presented TV series from all over the globe: his many extreme exploits include climbing Everest, rowing the Atlantic, crossing the deserts of the Empty Quarter in the Middle East and racing across Antarctica to the south pole.

He has toured the UK with his sell-out shows, and most recently has become co-owner of Sheffield-based outdoor clothing brand Buffalo Systems. His work combines adventure, conservation and storytelling.

Introduced by an unsupervised Lee Anderson, the byelection candidate was out of his depth immediately

An idiot’s guide to running a byelection campaign. First, know your constituency boundaries. Sometimes easier said than done. On Tuesday morning, Lee Anderson was to be found doing a photo op for the Gorton and Denton byelection by posing outside the Stanley hotel. Which just happens to be in Angela Rayner’s constituency. Shame that someone pointed out Anderson’s mistake. He could happily have spent the next four weeks knocking on the wrong doors.

Not that Lee was in any way apologetic. He quickly tweeted that the photo he had posted clearly showed he was in the right place. Go figure. Maybe it was just the camera that moved. In any case, Reform are happy bunnies these days. Thrilled with the defections of Nadhim Zahawi, Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and … er, Andrew Rosindell. It’s almost as if they have no quality control. All failed Tories. They also can’t believe their luck that Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham are locked in a death spiral. A three-way marginal seat had just become a whole lot more winnable.

She has based ballets on Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel and Eva Perón. So Annabelle Lopez Ochoa was well placed to take on the passionate, complicated figure of Anne Lister

A couple dance across the studio, their movements formal, the mood resigned. The man pulls his partner towards him but she spins away, landing face to face with another woman. Now the two women dance and everything is different: bright and playful as their eyes meet. It ends in a clinch behind a bookcase. The great love is not between the woman, Mariana, and her husband, but between Mariana and Anne Lister, also known as Gentleman Jack.

I’m watching this play out in a rehearsal room at Northern Ballet in Leeds, where choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is in the midst of creating a ballet version of Gentleman Jack, as popularised in Sally Wainwright’s hit TV series (Wainwright is a consultant on the ballet). Lister was a 19th-century landowner running her family’s estate in Halifax, but is better known for the diaries that revealed her passionate lesbian love affairs and for boldly living an unconventional life for the times.

Some in Hampshire constituency happy to vote for former Tory MP again but others find defection ‘quite alarming’

For Jamie Jewell, the pub owner at the Golden Lion, there has been radio silence from his local MP, Suella Braverman. In January last year, the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville visited the pub, offered to help the owners with removing a protected tree that was damaging the property, and posted photos with the staff on her Facebook page and for local media.

Jewell has not heard back from her since. “I’ve sent emails saying ‘we need support here’ and never received a response. Not even an acknowledgment,” Jewell said.

Proposed cuts by DHSC and DfE came despite concerns about inactivity among children contributing to obesity

A row between government departments has broken out after the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) proposed cutting all its funding for physical education in schools, the Guardian understands.

The DHSC is now intending to restore the funding despite insisting privately for weeks that it would end its contribution, until the Guardian contacted the department. Ministers are understood to have overruled the cuts.

Trump defends homeland security secretary but Hakeem Jeffries says: ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way’

• US politics live – latest updates

Top House Democrats on Tuesday told Donald Trump to fire Kristi Noem or they would launch impeachment proceedings against the homeland security secretary, in response to the weekend killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

The ultimatum came after a majority of the House Democratic caucus signed on to articles of impeachment introduced earlier in the month in response to the shooting death of Renee Good, who, like Pretti, was a US citizen killed by federal agents during the increasingly violent immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota’s largest city.

Matthew Goodwin, who is standing in Gorton and Denton, said UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds were not always British

The Reform UK candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has refused to disown his claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British.

Matthew Goodwin, a hard-right activist, was presented on Tuesday as the party’s candidate in the demographically diverse seat in south-east Manchester.

First of two 1,600-tonne boring machines drilling the 4.5 miles from Old Oak Common station switched on in London

Ministers have pledged that a redeveloped Euston HS2 station will be big enough to “serve the nation” as tunnelling began for the last miles of high-speed railway into central London.

Excavating the 4.5-mile tunnels from Old Oak Common in west London is expected to take between 12 and 18 months – although details of the terminus, and how it will be funded, are yet to be revealed.