He Voted Against the Defense Bill. Fort Rucker and Maxwell Are in His District.

Wall of Shame — Today: Alabama Power

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Alabama Power Employees Federal PAC (Birmingham) has put $10,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account — $5,000 in August 2025 and $5,000 in March 2026. Figures then voted no on the GRID Power Act to fast-track reliable, dispatchable generation. Only five Democrats in the House voted yes. He was not one of them. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

THE DEFENSE BILL CAME UP THIS WEEK

For eighteen months this brief has argued that Congressman Shomari Figures votes with his national party rather than with the district he represents. Most weeks that is hard to show, because most weeks in Congress produce nothing anybody here can see.

This week produced something anybody here can see.

The House took up the defense authorization for the coming year, and then a resolution ordering American forces out of hostilities with Iran. District 2 contains Fort Rucker and it contains Maxwell-Gunter. Those are not abstractions in Dale County or in Montgomery. They are payroll.

Everything below comes from the roll-call records published by the Clerk of the House. Nothing here is characterized. The votes are the votes.

THE ONE VOTE HE WANTS YOU TO NOTICE

On Tuesday the congressman voted for an amendment barring male participation in female sports at schools run by the Department of Defense. We are putting that in front of you ourselves, before his mail does, because it is the single vote from this week his campaign is going to want to talk about.

Here is what the mail will leave out.

National Republicans put this seat on their target list on Monday, July 20. He found this position on Tuesday, July 21. One day. Fox News Digital reports that the Alabama Democrats who voted this way had opposed similar legislation as recently as last year.

And the amendment was riding on a bill he voted against forty-eight hours later. An amendment vote on a bill you intend to kill is the cheapest vote available in Congress. It produces a press release and no law.

A man does not discover a conviction the morning after somebody puts a target on his seat. He rents one, for nineteen days, at no cost to himself.

THE VOTES THAT COST HIM SOMETHING

Now the rest of the week, where the votes were not free.

On Wednesday afternoon the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2027, two hundred sixteen to two hundred twelve. The congressman voted no. Every Republican in Alabama's delegation voted yes. The bill was written by Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, and it carries the pay raise the administration asked for — seven percent for the youngest enlisted troops, the ones living in barracks on money that does not stretch to the end of the month. Six Democrats in the House voted for it anyway. He was not one of them.

On Thursday the House agreed to a resolution directing the President to pull American forces out of hostilities with Iran, two hundred fourteen to two hundred eight. The congressman voted yes. Every Republican in Alabama's delegation voted no.

Also on Wednesday he voted against the budget for the coming fiscal year, which passed by two votes. And he voted against the Stop Insider Trading Act, which restricts stock trading by members of Congress and passed comfortably; thirteen Democrats managed to vote for it.

Add it up. In the week the defense bill reached the floor, the congressman from the district that hosts Fort Rucker and Maxwell voted against the defense bill and for withdrawing from Iran — and on both he stood opposite every Alabama Republican and alongside his leadership in Washington.

The free vote he took on Tuesday. The four that carried a price he did not.

HE ASKED FOR SOMETHING FOR MAXWELL IN THE BILL HE VOTED AGAINST

Attached to that same defense bill was an amendment he put his name to, with Terri Sewell and with Robert Aderholt, urging the Air Force to prioritize a Combined All-Domain Wargaming Center at Maxwell Air Force Base. The Rules Committee made it eligible for floor consideration.

Then he voted against the bill it was riding on.

We are not going to tell you the provision died. We have not pulled the final engrossed text, and this brief does not print what it has not checked. What we can tell you is the sequence, and the sequence is not in dispute: ask Washington for something for Montgomery, then vote no on the vehicle carrying it.

There is a word for a request you are unwilling to vote for, and it is not representation.

WHAT HIS OFFICE WILL SAY

Two answers are coming. Both fall apart on contact.

The first is that the defense bill got loaded up. A separate procedural vote, two hundred fourteen to two hundred eleven, instructed the clerk to staple the SAVE America Act onto it during engrossment, and the bill formally renames the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

Every must-pass bill of that size gets loaded up. That is what must-pass means, and he has been in Washington long enough to know it. Six Democrats looked at the identical loaded bill and voted for the pay raise anyway. The question in front of him was still yes or no on seven percent for the youngest troops at Fort Rucker. He voted no.

The second is that the Iran resolution was a constitutional question about who may take the country to war, not a question about Iran. That argument has a long conservative pedigree, and four Republicans voted with him on it.

Here is what it has never once done: cost him anything with his own leadership. When the principle and the whip count point the same direction every single time, for eighteen months, without exception, it is not a principle. It is an alibi with a footnote.

That is the pattern this brief keeps coming back to. The decisions that land on Ozark and Enterprise and Montgomery keep getting made four hundred miles away, by people who will never live with them, on information that gets thinner the further it travels from the place it applies to. A congressman is supposed to be the correction to that. Ours votes like part of the mechanism.

THE QUESTION HE STILL HAS NOT ANSWERED

For four briefs running we have asked the congressman to name one demand in the program the Democratic Socialists of America published on July 14 — abolishing the Senate, public ownership of major industry, universal rent control, a new constitution — that he would publicly refuse.

He has not. He is not going to.

Note what he was and was not willing to cross this week. He crossed his party on a schools amendment that cost him nothing in Washington and bought him a mailer in the Wiregrass. He has not crossed the wing of it that is writing his party's program and filling his account. One of those breaks is free. The other one is not, and he has never made it.

MONDAY IS THE LAST DAY

The special primary is Tuesday, August 11. There is no runoff. The top vote-getter goes to the November ballot.

Monday, July 27 is the voter registration deadline. That is three days from today, and it is the last day this electorate can grow.

Fourteen Alabama counties changed congressional districts between the court-drawn map and the 2023 map now in effect — including Coffee, Dale, Elmore, Geneva, Henry and Houston. If you live in one of them you may be registered and still not know which congressional race is on your ballot. The Secretary of State's site will tell you in about a minute.

Take Back District 2 does not pick among the six Republicans on the ballot. We have not and we will not. On August 12 we will support the nominee, whoever it is. Between now and Monday there is one thing worth doing, and it does not require agreeing with us about anything: make sure you are registered, and make sure it says where you actually live.