Riff Trace, Kansas racist and baby kicker.
Credit: The Daily Haze

WICHITA, KANSAS — The Wichita Police Department says it arrested a 31-year-old man and is investigating an incident at an east Wichita Dillons store it describes as a “racially motivated bias crime.”

Police arrested 31-year-old Riff Trace for “battery that was bias and racially motivated” and for resisting arrest.

Police say at about 7:20 a.m. Sunday, officers responded to an assault call at the Dillons store in the 3000 block of East Douglas.

“Through the investigation, it was learned Trace walked into the Dillons store and kicked a 1-year-old victim in the back, causing the child to fall on the floor,” police say.

Police say Trace did this while yelling obscenities and racial slurs. Police say when officers arrived, Riff “was being held on (the) ground by citizens.”

Lashantai Whitaker is the mother of the 1-year-old boy police say fell to the floor after being kicked by Trace. Wednesday, she spoke with Eyewitness News about what happened early Sunday morning.

“We were barely in the store and (Trace) kicked him in […]

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A new report from the Center for Religion and Civil Culture at the University of Southern California revealed that evangelical Christians can be divided into five different sects.

“The Varieties of American Evangelicalism,” detailed the ways in which the community has managed to divide, thanks in part, to President Donald Trump, The Christian Postcited.

The five groups are described as Trump-vangelicals, Neo-fundamentalist evangelicals, iVangelicals, Kingdom Christians, and Peace and Justice evangelicals.

Trump-vangelicals are exactly what many think of when they picture political evangelical Christians. The Post described them as a kind of “Christian nationalist” serving as Trump’s base. They’re primarily white, with only a few Latino or black pastors. “They value access to political power and many believe God chose and blessed Trump in order to ‘make American great again.’”

Neo-fundamentalists can also be folded into the Trump-loving group of evangelicals, the study concluded. The difference is that they still maintain some semblance of their Christian values and distance themselves from the president’s “moral failings.” They focus on understanding their theology and being more personally moral.

iVangelicals sound exactly like the name. The megachurch movement helped […]

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — In 2018, Gallup published nearly 100 global reports and articles on what people in more than 140 countries are thinking and feeling. Through our World Poll, Gallup systematically tracks and reports on wellbeing, leadership approval ratings, confidence in national institutions, employment rates and other issues affecting people’s daily lives and, ultimately, the choices they make.

The following list includes Gallup editors’ picks for some of the most important world discoveries — and most highly read international stories — of the year:

World’s Approval of U.S. Leadership Drops to New Low: Germany replaced the U.S. as the top-rated global power in the world in 2017, as approval of U.S. leadership sank to a new low of 30% during the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Gallup’s report on the ratings of world leaders revealed U.S. alliances and partnerships at risk.

Real Global Unemployment Is 33%, Not 6%: There’s a problem with how the world defines and measures unemployment. About half of the people worldwide who are self-employed are really unemployed. These jobs aren’t really jobs. Gallup investigated the real […]

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Illustration by David de las Heras

Mike Wallace sat in his pickup truck on a dusty back road near his farm outside Leachville, Arkansas, typing impatiently into his cell phone. “I’m waiting on you,” he wrote. “You coming?” It was hot for late October. The rows of soybeans, cotton, and corn, which just days ago had spread across much of the region, were largely gone, replaced by dry, flat dirt. The 2016 harvesting season was nearly over. A minute passed, and Wallace typed another message, sounding slightly triumphant. “Looks like you don’t have much to say now.

Wallace, 55, was a prominent figure in the Arkansas Delta farming community. His 5,000-acre farm was large, although the yield on that year’s soybean crop hadn’t been as successful as he had expected. Wallace believed he knew why his crops had failed, and it had nothing to do with the sun or the rain or the decisions he had made about when to put his seeds in the ground. Instead, he blamed a 26-year-old farmhand named […]

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In the summer of 2008, William Pfeil made a startling discovery: Hundreds of foreign companies that operated in the U.S. weren’t paying U.S. taxes, and his employer, the Internal Revenue Service, had no idea. Under U.S. law, companies that do business in the Gulf of Mexico owe the American government a piece of what they make drilling for oil there or helping those that do. But the vast majority of the foreign companies weren’t paying anything, and taxpaying American companies were upset, arguing that it unfairly allowed the foreign rivals to underbid for contracts.

Pfeil and the IRS started pursuing the non-U.S. entities. Ultimately, he figures he brought in more than $50 million in previously unpaid taxes over the course of about five years. It was an example of how the tax-collecting agency is supposed to work.

But then Congress began regularly reducing the IRS budget. After 43 years with the agency, Pfeil — who had hoped to reach his 50th anniversary — was angry about the “steady decrease in budget and resources” the agency had seen. He retired in 2013 […]

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