Nineteen Democrats Voted Yes. Shomari Figures Voted No.

Wall of Shame — Today: Alabama Peanut Producers

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Alabama Peanut Producers PAC (Dothan) has put $5,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account. Figures then voted no on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — the same ag and tax package Wiregrass peanut farmers benefit from. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

THE LAST VOTE HE CAST BEFORE GOING HOME

The House finished its week Thursday. The last recorded vote it took — Roll Call 283, and still the last one posted by the Clerk as of this morning — was on a bill called the Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled Americans Act.

It passed, two hundred thirty-two to one hundred eighty-eight.

Every Republican who voted, voted for it. Two hundred twelve to nothing.

Nineteen Democrats voted for it too.

Congressman Shomari Figures voted against it.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN IT

We are going to tell you what the bill does before we tell you what we think of the vote, because a bill with a title like that one is exactly the sort of thing a brief can lie about, and this brief does not.

It reauthorizes, through 2031, the Social Security Administration's authority to run demonstration projects inside the disability insurance program. That authority lapsed at the end of 2021. A demonstration project is a pilot: the agency temporarily changes a rule for a group of volunteers and finds out what happens.

The problem it is aimed at is real and it is not partisan. People on disability insurance who want to try working are often afraid to try, because trying and failing can cost them the benefit they cannot live without. The pilots exist to test ways out of that trap.

Three things are written into the bill itself. Participation is voluntary. A participant's total income cannot be reduced. And the agency has to report a project to Congress at least a hundred and twenty days before it starts.

THE CASE AGAINST IT, PUT AS WELL AS ITS OWN SIDE PUTS IT

Now the other argument, stated the way its best advocate states it, and not caricatured.

Congressman John Larson of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on Social Security, argued on the floor that demonstration authority in this administration's hands is a lever to cut earned benefits — that the same power letting an agency test a more generous rule lets it test a stricter one, and that the first Trump administration proposed tightening disability eligibility.

That is not a frivolous argument. It is an argument about trust, and about who holds the pen.

Here is what it is not. It is not an argument about anything in the text. The text says voluntary. The text says total income cannot be reduced. The text says Congress gets a hundred and twenty days' notice before a project begins — which is to say Congress keeps the power to stop one it does not like, in the open, on the record.

Nineteen Democrats read the same bill and heard the same objection and voted yes anyway. Any one of them could tell you that a person can believe in guardrails and still vote for a pilot program.

He was not one of the nineteen.

ONE VOTE IS ONE VOTE. THIS IS FIVE.

We have said in this brief before that a single roll call proves very little, and we meant it. So look at the whole week that ended with this one.

He voted against the defense authorization carrying a seven percent pay raise for the youngest enlisted troops — in a district that contains Fort Rucker and Maxwell.

He voted for a resolution pulling American forces out of hostilities with Iran, opposite every Republican in Alabama's delegation.

He voted against the budget for the coming fiscal year.

He voted against the Stop Insider Trading Act, which restricts stock trading by members of Congress. Thirteen Democrats managed to vote for that one.

And he closed the week voting against a disability work pilot that nineteen of his own colleagues supported.

Five recorded votes. Five times alongside his leadership in Washington.

He did break once. On Tuesday he voted for an amendment on girls' sports at Defense Department schools — one day after national Republicans added this seat to their target list, and forty-eight hours before he voted to kill the bill that amendment was riding on. We told you that ourselves two days ago and we are telling you again, because we would rather you hear the inconvenient part from us than from his mail.

One break that cost him nothing. Five votes that would have.

THE RECORD IS CLOSED NOW

Here is the part that matters for the next seventeen days.

Roll Call 283 is the last one on the board. Whatever the congressman's voting record is going to be when this district goes to the polls on August 11, that is the record. Barring something nobody expects, nothing between now and then will add to it or subtract from it.

You are not waiting on more information. You have all of it.

MONDAY IS THE LAST DAY TO REGISTER

Monday, July 27 is the voter registration deadline for the August 11 special primary. That is two days from today. It applies to Congressional Districts 1, 2, 6 and 7.

Fourteen Alabama counties changed congressional districts between the court-drawn map and the 2023 map now in effect — Coffee, Dale, Elmore, Geneva, Henry and Houston among them. You can be registered and still not know which congressional race is on your ballot. AlabamaVotes.gov will tell you in about a minute.

AND THEN THESE DATES, WHICH NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT

If you cannot get to a polling place on August 11, Alabama lets you vote absentee. You need one of the reasons the law lists, and you need to move well before the election.

The reasons in the statute include: you expect to be out of the county on election day; you have a physical illness or infirmity that keeps you from the polls; you work a shift of at least ten hours that overlaps the hours the polls are open; you are a student enrolled outside your county; you are in the armed forces or the spouse or dependent of someone who is; you are caring for a family member confined to home.

Tuesday, August 4 — the last day your county's Absentee Election Manager can receive your application if you send it by mail.

Thursday, August 6 — the last day if you hand-deliver it.

Monday, August 10 — hand-delivered ballots must be in the manager's office by close of business, and no later than five in the afternoon.

Tuesday, August 11 — ballots returned by mail must arrive by noon. Polls are open seven in the morning to seven at night, and you will need photo identification either way.

Applications are at AlabamaVotes.gov, or from your county Absentee Election Manager, who is usually the circuit clerk.

WHERE WE STAND

Take Back District 2 does not pick among the six Republicans on this ballot. We have not and we will not. On August 12 we will be behind the nominee, whoever he turns out to be.

Between now and then there are two things worth doing, and neither one requires agreeing with us about anything.

Register by Monday.

And if August 11 is a day you cannot get to the polls, get your absentee application in the mail before the end of the month.