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    Luke Johnson

    Luke Johnson

    Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post

  • WATCH: Warren Goes After Paul Ryan

    Elizabeth Warren wants a fight with Paul Ryan. Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ryan (R-Wis.) are both considered to be intellectual leaders in their own spheres -- Warren on the populist wing of the Democratic Party and Ryan on the Tea Party wing of the GOP. Warren, in comments at the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor’s Humphrey-Mondale Dinner on March 29th, worked to frame the debate as one about the character of working people in America.

  • How West Virginia's Politicians Are Ruled By Coal

    On the morning of Thursday, January 9, 2014, the people of Charleston, West Virginia, awoke to a strange tang in the air off the Elk River.

  • How Dead People Run Washington

    Philip K. Howard, founder of nonprofit Common Good, thinks that the American government is being run by dead people. Government gridlock is not merely a product of polarized leadership, Howard argued in an interview with The Huffington Post on Thursday. The problem is more systemic, rooted in outdated laws and special interest money that make change difficult, if not impossible.

  • Senate Voting On Torture Report Release

    The Senate Intelligence Committee's expected vote to approve declassifying part of a secret report on Bush-era interrogations of terrorism suspects puts the onus on the CIA and a reluctant White House to speed the release of one of the most definitive accounts about the government's actions after the 9/11 attacks. The agency never conducted a rigorous internal examination of the effectiveness of its interrogation methods, he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

  • Cruz Wooing Critical GOP Voting Bloc

    Possible presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is auditioning at one of the nation's largest meetings of young evangelicals, a critical voting bloc for any Republican with White House ambitions. The Texas senator and tea party favorite was to speak Wednesday before the student body of Liberty University, the Virginia school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. "Sen. Cruz has boldly and courageously defended the United States Constitution and the principles of limited government our founders held dear even when it meant opposing members of his own political party," university Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said in a statement.

  • Obama Taking Minimum Wage Message On The Road

    President Barack Obama is using his call for a higher minimum wage to help boost a Michigan congressman running for the Senate. Obama is being joined Wednesday at the University of Michigan by Rep. Gary Peters. That makes Peters the first Senate candidate to embrace the president's message and the chance to appear with him before voters this year.

  • March Was The First Month Without A U.S. Combat Death In More Than A Decade

    There were no U.S. combat casualties in Afghanistan in the month of March -- only the third month in over 12 years of war in which there were no combat-related U.S. deaths in the country. It was also the first time since July 2002 that there were no U.S. combat fatalities anywhere. Pentagon data as of Monday, March 31 confirms that the last U.S. deaths from the war in Afghanistan were in the month of February.

  • Rand Paul's Shadowy Fundraising Network Could Cause 2016 Problems

    The race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination looks, for the moment, like the race to beat Rand Paul.

  • Voters Deciding Whether To Reelect Ethically-Clouded Mayor

    Voters in the nation's capital are deciding whether Mayor Vincent Gray should get a second term amid a federal investigation of his 2010 campaign. The Board of Elections says polls have opened Tuesday with no problems reported. Gray faces seven challengers in the Democratic mayoral primary, and polls have shown him neck-and-neck with D.C. Councilmember Muriel Bowser.

  • 'House Of Cards' Gets A Taste Of Its Own Medicine

    Frank Underwood, the legislative mastermind of "House Of Cards" who always seems to get his way, might have admired the actions of the Maryland House of Delegates on Thursday if they were not directed against the show he stars in. The show has been threatening to leave Maryland if the state doesn't pass more tax credits and has put off filming Season 3, so one legislator introduced a threat of his own. Del.

  • U.S. Officials Are So Stoked To Be Sanctioned By Putin

    Russia's move to sanction U.S. officials over the Crimea conflict landed in Washington on Thursday with a thud. Almost immediately after the Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions against 20 Russians, including oligarchs close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded with its own sanctions list of nine U.S. government officials.

  • Obama's Russia Sanctions Elicit A 'Meh' From Moscow To Washington

    The United States responded Monday to Crimea's secession vote by announcing sanctions against seven Russian and four Ukrainian officials. The goal was to impose costs on Russia for making military moves in Ukrainian territory and encouraging Crimea to rejoin the Russian Federation. "The actions we're taking today have an impact in making very clear that we are imposing real costs on the Russians and on the Russian economy for the actions that have occurred and setting up a very clear deterrence for being contemplated," said a senior Obama administration official on Monday.

  • McCain Eviscerates Fellow GOPers: 'Don't Call Yourselves Reagan Republicans'

    John McCain (R-Ariz. took to the Senate floor Thursday to castigate fellow Republicans for holding up aid to Ukraine over provisions boosting funding for the International Monetary Fund. "What has happened?

  • Rand Paul Comes Out Against Ukraine Loans

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) came out Wednesday against loans for Ukraine, because he believes the money would benefit Russia. This is a government that just came into existence, with maybe many questions of how they came into existence," said Paul. Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, was appointed by its parliament in late February.

  • How Americans Feel About Obama's Handling Of Ukraine Crisis

    More Americans support President Barack Obama's handling of the crisis in Ukraine than those who don't approve of his actions, but a majority oppose economic aid to the country or backing out of June's G-8 Summit, a CNN poll released Monday said. Forty-eight percent of Americans back Obama's response, while 43 percent disapprove and 9 percent are unsure. But the crisis has not improved Obama's approval rating in general -- 43 percent approve of him overall, while 53 percent disapprove.

  • Ukraine's First President Wants Good Relations With Russia But There's That Little Problem Of Putin

    The first president of an independent Ukraine, who in 1994 sent Soviet nuclear weapons back to Russia in exchange for its pledge not to use force, said nobody believed at the time that an attack from Russia was even possible. "There was no such prediction," former President Leonid Kravchuk told The Huffington Post in an interview from Kiev Wednesday. Kravchuk called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect the Budapest Memorandum, which Putin has said is now invalid because he considers the new government in Kiev invalid.

  • Russia Wages Media War Alongside Crimea Invasion

    One of the first casualties in the Russian invasion of Crimea was independent television. Black Sea TV, the peninsula's only independent channel, was shut down on Monday. The head editor, Oleksandra Kvitko, said a Crimean governing body had decided to close the station, claiming there had been threats against its journalists.

  • Obama: 'I Got High, Not Always Thinking About The Harm It Could Do'

    President Barack Obama on Thursday launched his "My Brother's Keeper" initiative, urging stronger efforts to create more opportunities for young minority men and to improve conditions that keep them impoverished and imprisoned in disproportionate numbers. Obama said these young men consistently do worse in society, with odds stacked against them. "By almost every measure the group that's facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color," Obama said, ticking off statistics on fatherhood, literacy, crime and poverty.

  • Ted Cruz Refuses To Rule Out Campaigning Against Fellow Republicans

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) likely gave his GOP colleagues another cause for heartburn Thursday, refusing to promise to stay out of primaries where he could potentially use his conservative clout against fellow Republicans. "What I have said is that I'm likely going to stay out of incumbent Republican primaries," Cruz said at a Politico Playbook breakfast moderated by Mike Allen. Cruz's comments indicated his willingness to keep open a potentially damaging political option that he has not used so far: wielding his sizable grassroots and fundraising power against an incumbent senator.

  • GOP Sanctions Push Angers A Traditional Ally

    Two top veterans groups have come out against a Senate GOP effort to insert an Iran sanctions amendment into an unrelated veterans bill, putting the party at odds with a constituency that leans Republican. "Iran is a serious issue that Congress needs to address, but it cannot be tied to S. 1982, which is extremely important as our nation prepares to welcome millions of U.S. military servicemen and women home from war," said American Legion National Commander Daniel Dellinger in a Wednesday statement, referring to the veterans benefits measure introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).