Politics

Del. Matt Morgan (R), who heads up the Maryland Freedom Caucus, joins Jim Lokay on "The Final 5" to react to Thursday's ruling by the Md. Supreme Court allowing a redistricting referendum to move forward in November, but with court-authored changes. 

On "The Final 5" with Jim Lokay, Sean Higgins, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discussed the August jobs report showing roughly 162,000 jobs added, including a notable bump in bars and restaurants — a gain Higgins attributed partly to people getting in a "last fling" before summer ends. This came after July's initial jobs number was revised from a loss to a gain, raising questions about the reliability of the data.

on "The Final 5 with Jim Lokay," Alejandro Vasquez Bauer, a director of policy, advocacy, and partnerships for immigrant students, discussed the case of Pierre Dumas Bell, a 20-year-old Ohio college student whose family says he became despondent after losing immigration protections and being required to wear an electronic monitor, using the case to illustrate how the loss of Temporary Protected Status and broader immigration enforcement can affect young people's mental health and academic performance

On "The Final 5 with Jim Lokay," NOTUS reporter Anna Kramer discussed her reporting on a National Park Service proposal to swap roughly a quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite National Park to a private developer for use as a road connecting an outside development to one of the park's central roads, a plan still in its early appraisal stage but notable because it breaks with precedent — a nearly identical request was rejected by both the Bush and Obama administrations, upheld in court after the developer sued, and again denied by the Biden administration, while Kramer's sources describe the idea as unpopular within the Park Service itself even as political appointees at the Interior Department push to speed it along.

Data center expansion has become a major campaign issue across the D.C. region and nationwide, driving intense debates over local economic benefits versus environmental and infrastructure strains. On The Final 5, Christopher Johnson, President and Co-founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute, defended the rapid growth of data centers in places like Loudoun County's "Data Center Alley."

On The Final 5 with Jim Lokay, U.S. Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) addressed growing concerns surrounding President Trump's involvement in the upcoming midterm elections, focusing on recent developments involving the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

25 years after the September 11 attacks, former 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund Special Master Kenneth Feinberg reflects on the daunting task of assigning financial compensation to families amid unimaginable grief. In an in-studio Final 5 interview ahead of the re-release of his book "What Is Life Worth?",  Feinberg shares the personal stories that stayed with him, explains the formula Congress required him to follow and discusses the enduring responsibility to remember the victims—and the lessons of national unity for a new generation.

Political commentator Kaivan Shroff joins The Final 5 to discuss the controversy surrounding Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s association with progressive streamer Hasan Piker. Shroff says Piker’s past remarks, including a comment about 9/11 for which he later apologized, are indefensible—but argues El-Sayed’s response has allowed the issue to linger and handed Republicans an effective line of attack. The conversation also examines broader tensions inside the Democratic Party over progressivism, Israel policy and claims of Islamophobic attacks against El-Sayed.