<....Turning Windows 11 Start menu advertisements off is simple, but you'll also have to turn off tips and shortcuts in the process.

1. Open Settings. You can do this by pressing the Windows Key and searching Settings, or by clicking on the Cog at the bottom right of the same menu.

2. Go to Personalization.

3. Select Start.

4. Toggle to Off where it says Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more. If you don't have the update yet, the section should be named Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more. It's uncertain if these changes will remain when the update applies to your system, though.>

< 35.e4 has little relevance to the achievement of White's victory. Frankly, it's not worth mentioning without providing analysis. White's standard pawn structure in the Polishing Opening is e3 & d4 (keeping the center closed while behind in development), unless he's playing the Tartakower gambit....>

Your only concern with relevance is using your view of it as a vehicle to stalk my posts.

'Frankly'? Candour from you would have the charm of novelty.

In life, <you> are not worth mentioning.

The 'Polishing Opening'? That so?

<Trump has bemoaned the fact that he is required to be at a long trial in Manhattan, estimated to last at least six weeks. The criminal trial, as all know by now, involves his hush money payoff to a porn star or interference with an election, however you want to look at it.

Trump whines that he cannot hit the campaign trail in the swing states. He has even given things a sly new twist, calling the trial, rather than the underlying facts, “an election interference case.”

“The case is a sham,” said Trump. “This is a trial that should have never been brought,” he griped in the courtroom hallway Tuesday morning, adding, “I should be right now in Pennsylvania, in Florida, in many other states, in North Carolina, Georgia, campaigning.”

Trump, as is often the case, misleads. There really should be no legal obstacle to his giving the trial a pass and hitting the campaign trail, or luxuriating on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago. Trump need merely make a motion under New York Code of Criminal Procedure §340.50 to have the court dispense with the requirement that he be present. And his lawyers know how to make motions.

New York law is plain that Trump does not have to be at the trial. The relevant section reads:

On motion of a defendant represented by counsel, the court may, in the absence of an objection by the people, issue an order dispensing with the requirement that the defendant be personally present at trial. Such an order may be made only upon the filing of a written and subscribed statement by the defendant declaring that he waives his right to be personally present at the trial and authorizing his attorney to conduct his defense.

In New York, the prosecution is called “the people.”

Retired Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a sometime member of the Trump defense team, was quick to pile on, arguing that, “There’s no reason why the prosecution should object to that [Trump missing court dates], except that they want to engage in election interference.” Dershowitz concededly spoke from ignorance, admitting that “I don’t know if his lawyers have made that motion, but they surely should.”

Curiously, they never have.

In fact, Trump is present at the trial because he wants to be, and he needs to be for reasons apart from his campaign to win the 2024 presidential election. He needs to be because it would be suicidal before the jury for him not to be. Imagine prosecutors trying the case to an empty chair. What an adverse impression that would make on the jury! A conviction would be a near certainty, as it was in the first E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, which Trump did not see fit to attend.

Bad enough that no member of Trump’s family — not Melania, not Donald Jr., not Ivanka, not Eric, not Tiffany, not Barron — is present in the court room. But a criminal trial to a jury without Trump’s presence? Unthinkable. Ask any good criminal defense lawyer — he or she will tell you it’s like playing Hamlet without the ghost....>

<....Of course, the prosecutor could object to Trump’s wanting to blow the whole thing off, and insist that the former president be present. But how could he be heard to object? And on what grounds? The right to be present is a right of the defendant, not of the people. Were District Attorney Alvin Bragg to object, it would really look as if he were trying to keep Trump from campaigning.

Trump has called the trial a “witch hunt,” and has used campaign money to pay his lawyers to defend what he called a “political prosecution” by Biden and the Justice Department. His lawyers sought to run that one in front of the jury, but Judge Merchan has ruled the “political prosecution” argument out of the case.

But Trump has not moved to be excused from the requirement that he be present. All he has done is stand in front of the cameras and lie about it.

Trump has been known for years as the master of delay in litigation. Delay has been central to Trump’s bag of tricks in Florida and the District of Columbia, where he hopes to run the clock out until after the election when, if elected, he could self-pardon or order his attorney general to drop the cases. In New York, he sprinted to the appeals court three times in one week in an effort to put off the trial. And three times the higher court slammed the door in his face.

Trump’s lawyers in Washington, Florida and most recently in Georgia spend their energies drafting a plethora of pretrial motions, sifting the indictments for anything that would throttle the process with responses, hearings, rulings and appeals.

In the New York case, if Trump is truly salivating to hit the campaign trail, he could readily shorten the trial by agreeing to stipulate to the documentary evidence. Getting documents into evidence is time consuming but important. Lawyers call it laying the foundation. In my experience, laying the foundation usually bores the jury to tears. They want to see eyeball-to-eyeball star witness for the people, Michael Cohen, and hear former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as the pièce de la résistance, Stormy Daniels. After all, a sigh is more than just a sigh. But, according to the Washington Post, Trump’s legal team has decided not to stipulate to anything and to fight over everything.

It is hard to impeach the testimony of documentary evidence, the mute witnesses establishing the falsification of business records. But Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche in his opening statement disparagingly called the people’s evidence “really just pieces of paper.” And so we beat on.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...

<Former President Trump is showing signs that his vulnerabilities with suburban voters in 2020 will carry over to 2024.

The persistent protest vote against Trump has been pronounced in suburbs around Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta, even after former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ended her campaign.

Haley, who suspended her campaign last month, has received double-digit vote shares in key suburban counties in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia.

Pennsylvania: In Chester County, Haley won 25% of the vote; in Delaware, she won 23%; in Montgomery, she won 25%, and in Bucks, 19% of the vote went to Haley.

Wisconsin: Haley won 12% or more in each of the three large suburban areas outside of Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington). She slightly overperformed in these counties compared to her overall vote totals. Trump announced Wednesday he is holding a rally in Waukesha next week. Georgia: Haley, who dropped out after some early ballots had been cast, still made a sizable primary showing in suburban Atlanta, including 23% in Cobb and 17% in Gwinnett counties. Between the lines: Almost 17% of GOP voters cast a ballot for Haley in the primary on Tuesday.

Trump also underperformed in Pennsylvania counties that were strongholds for him in 2020, such as Lancaster.

Trump "can't win without [suburban voters], especially in states like the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania and others," said Vince Galko, a Pennsylvania GOP strategist.

The other side: "Yesterday, President Trump continued his winning streak and delivered a resounding primary win in Pennsylvania," Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement.

Leavitt also highlighted battleground polling that has shown Trump leading Biden. The Biden campaign, which is facing its own protest vote, has pointed to the anti-Trump vote in GOP primary contests as a sign of his vulnerabilities ahead of November.

"Donald Trump has a serious general election problem," the Biden campaign rapid response director Ammar Moussa wrote Wednesday.

What to watch: Forward Majority, a Democratic super PAC that focuses on state legislative races, is eyeing 41 districts that predominately [sic] run through the suburbs in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

"Rather than a few battleground states, voters who live in just a handful of suburban legislative districts will decide control of Congress, the White House and all the rights that fall to state legislature," Forward Majority wrote in a memo.>

<The three House Republican rebels pushing to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., are silent on former President Donald Trump's support for the embattled congressional leader.

Roughly just six months after winning the speaker's gavel following three weeks of chaos over the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Johnson is already under threat of losing it after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a resolution for a House-wide vote on his leadership, known as a motion to vacate the chair.

Two more lawmakers, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., signed onto her resolution in protest of Johnson's $95 billion foreign aid plan, which included funds for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific but nothing on the U.S. border, much to some conservatives' chagrin.

Johnson got some key backup earlier this week when Trump came to his defense, arguing Johnson is doing the best he can with a razor-thin House GOP majority.

"It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he’s a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on NATO when I said NATO has to pay up," Trump told radio host John Fredericks after his Monday court appearance. "It’s a tough situation when you have what, I think, is a very good man. I think he’s trying very hard. And again, we’ve got to have a big election."

Gosar's office told Fox News Digital he had "no comment" on Trump's defense of Johnson. Gosar has been one of Trump's most ardent supporters in Congress.

Spokespeople for Greene and Massie similarly had nothing to share — Fox News Digital attempted to reach both offices multiple times for comment on Trump's remarks but did not get responses.

Like Gosar, Greene has been a top Trump ally in Congress and a popular surrogate for him on the campaign trail. She's also been one of Johnson's fiercest critics over his bipartisan work on issues like government spending and foreign aid.

Massie has had a significantly frostier relationship with the former president, having supported his GOP primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, before DeSantis dropped out of the race earlier this year.

The Kentucky Republican has most recently accused Trump of "bullying" fellow Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., when he called for a primary challenger to take her down.

Both Greene and Massie, however, have signaled that they're unrepentant about their threats against Johnson in the days since Trump's defense.

"It’s baffling hearing the establishment complain that it’s too much drama, too hard, and too risky to go through another Speaker race. Meanwhile, Americans are getting kicked in the teeth from the ridiculous drama inflicted on them from pathetic politicians in Washington," Greene wrote Tuesday on X. "You know what Americans think is hard? Paying their bills. You know what Americans think is risky? Doing absolutely nothing but pass messaging bills about the daily deadly border invasion."

Massie wrote on X that same day, "The weakest argument in defense of Speaker Johnson is ‘It’s a razor thin majority; you can’t get everything you want.’ We don’t expect to get everything, but we also won’t tolerate complete & total surrender."

All eyes are on Greene; for now, there's nothing compelling House leaders to bring her motion up for a vote. If she declares it a "privileged resolution," lawmakers would be forced to take it up within two legislative days.

A majority of House Republican lawmakers have already signaled that they don't have the appetite for another period of upheaval like what followed McCarthy's ouster.>