Leid Stories

Two African American men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, both 23, were arrested April 12 at a Starbucks in Philadelphia after the store’s manager said they were not paying customers and were not entitled to any of the cafe’s amenities. After protests urging a national boycott of Starbucks, the men have reached undisclosed settlements with the parent company, and each has agreed to a $1 symbolic settlement with the city in exchange for $200,000 to support a program in minority entrepreneurship.

Two Native American men were part of an organized tour of Colorado State University on Monday when campus police showed up and detained them for questioning. A white woman who was on the tour with her daughter had called in a report that the Native American men on the tour were “making her nervous," The Denver Post reported yesterday. After campus security questioned the men, they left the tour and the campus and returned home to New Mexico. CSU officials reached out to the men to apologize, but it appears the damage is done.

Leid Stories notes that “teachable moments” like these almost always come at the expense of victims of racism and not the ones inflicting it.

Entertainer Bill Cosby, convicted April 26 in a Pennsylvania court on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, is to learn the length of his prison sentence in June. The maximum for each count is 10 years.

Leid Stories continues with listeners’ observations on the fairness of the trial of Bill Cosby, which ended April 26 with guilty verdicts on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault—charges that could cost him up to 10 years on each count when he is sentenced next month.

The official coroner’s report on the March 18 killing of Stephon Clark by two still-unnamed Sacramento Police Department officers has touched off a new round of tensions. The report, released yesterday, disputes key findings of an earlier, independent autopsy performed by the Clark family’s forensic pathologist. The reports differ in the number of bullets that struck Clark, where about the body he was struck, and whether Clark was facing his shooters or was attempting to run away from them when he was hit.

Entertainer Bill Cosby, convicted April 26 in a Pennsylvania court on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, is to learn the length of his prison sentence in June. The maximum for each count is 10 years.

Leid Stories continues with listeners’ observations about the fairness of his trial.

A week into a strike by 50,000 teachers in Arizona over long-overdue salary increases and funding for basics like books and school supplies, and one doesn’t get a sense that this constitutes a state of emergency. Similarly, in Colorado, some 10,000 teachers walked off their jobs demanding pay hikes, facility upgrades and new textbooks for students. The state governments say they simply don’t have the money. Shouldn’t this be where Secretary of Education rides to the rescue and brokers a solution?

Vice President Mike Pence decided yesterday to keep the issue of “The Wall” going. He visited a wall-building project in Calexico, Calif., and used it as a backdrop to tell the media that President Trump will have his wall. Earlier in the day, about 150 people (most of them from Central American states) seeking to file for asylum in the United States were turned away at a border-crossing processing center in San Diego. We discuss why it was against both U.S. and international law to turn them away, and why the administration continues to conflate the issue of asylum with illegal immigration.

Listeners continue to share their views about the just-concluded Bill Cosby trial, in which a jury found the entertainer guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for sexually assaulting a female basketball coach he had mentored in his Philadelphia home in 2004. Cosby, 80, faces up to 10 in prison on each count when he is sentenced in June.

More than a month ago, about 150 people, including many families with children, began a 2,000-mile trek north—from southern Mexico to a border-crossing processing center in San Diego, Calif.—seeking legal entry into the United States. Most of them said they were fleeing the intolerable poverty, political turmoil and unspeakable violence in their home countries in Central America. But when they got to San Diego, they were turned away by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol at the San Ysidro crossing, which told them there was no room. Trump’s ramped-up immigration policy seems to include swamping Mexico with Central American migrants.

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria begins a three-day visit at the White House today. He and President Trump are expected to discuss trade, economic development throughout the African continent, and stemming the tide of terrorism. Talks with Trump are said to have as a backdrop President Obama’s purportedly lackluster relationship with Africa’s leaders.

Leid Stories listeners share their views in a preliminary discussion on the Bill Cosby trial, which ended last Thursday with a jury’s verdict convicting him of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for sexually assaulting a female basketball coach he had mentored in his Philadelphia home in 2004. The 80-year-old comedian faces up to 10 in prison on each count when he is sentenced in June.

Welcome to the best peer-education program on the planet—“Free Your Mind Friday” on Leid Stories.

It’s an open forum for the exchange of information, opinions and ideas, and analytical thinking is the star of the show.

Share your intellectual wealth. Call in (888-874-4888) and help us all fight the power and frustrate the system by freeing our minds!

A presidency continually rocked by scandal, turmoil and a distorted view of his own power. A Congress that dislikes the open contempt he shows it. A Republican Party that holds him personally responsible for decimating its political gains. A record exodus of Republicans from the House and the Senate. A Cabinet of novices who aren’t quite sure what they’re supposed to be doing. A Democratic opposition that threatens often to impeach. World leaders who think he’s an intellectual light and clown. Media outlets that give him no slack, sensing he’s vulnerable. A wife who swats away his hand. His “Make America Great Again” political base aren’t themselves feeling great about the promises he made. And now, a personal lawyer he thinks might “flip” on him under the intense pressure of concurrent federal investigations.

It’s not easy being Donald J. Trump right now. And yet, he’s got to pull a whole lot of rabbits out of a hat right quick, with midterm elections right around the corner. Can Trump survive the demons that hound him?

For several years now, The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has been the principal target of a self-initiated forensic investigation by Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street banker, who early into his probe found evidence that the foundation was a sham, an extremely lucrative money-making operation for the family. The foundation, he found, not only was operating outside of its original purpose (to build and maintain a presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.), but had illegally launched a number of “affiliated” entities that appeared to be nonprofits but were in fact additional sources of revenue for the Clintons.

How were they able to accomplish these things without detection or sanction? How were they able to get away with such massive fraud (Ortel alleged it is “the largest unprosecuted fraud in history.”)?

The answer: Coverups by governmental officials at the highest levels.

Ortel has been reporting his findings on the Clinton foundation for more than two years. His reports have kickstarted probes by several governments who had contributed billions of dollars to the foundation’s purported “good works.” But here in the United States, coverups provided unprecedented protection.

On Leid Stories today, Ortel asserts that the evidence shows the Clinton-coverup road leads directly to former President Barack H. Obama.

Ostensibly to commemorate deep historical ties and the continuing strength of the relationship between The United States and France, President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte are the honored guests of a three-day state visit hosted by President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. The highlight of the visit, which began Monday, is a series of bilateral talks and conferences scheduled today. And, of course, the obligatory fancy-schmancy white-tie state dinner tonight at the White House.

Macron’s visit comes soon after France and Britain joined the United States in unsanctioned April 13 airstrikes on targets within Syria alleged to be production plants for chemical weapons the Bashar al-Assad regime is accused of using against its enemies in an ongoing civil war.

Gilbert Mercier, cofounder and editor in chief of newsjunkiepost, discusses the on-again, off-again budding bromance between Macron and Trump and the significance of Macron’s state visit.

Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, is still holding on to the hope that the U.S. Justice Department will bring to account Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who put her 43-year-old son Eric in an illegal chokehold on July 7, 2014 that killed him. The New York Times reported last week that some federal prosecutors within the Justice Department had recommended prosecution of Pantaleo on federal civil-rights charges, but that others were uncertain whether such charges would yield a conviction.

The Garner case, which has been a frequent topic on Leid Stories, deserves a much closer look—this time discussing the intricacies of how justice is actually railroaded by systems that publicly proclaim their rugged pursuit of it.