Alabama Congressman Shomari Figures told a town hall crowd he supports giving families "more choices and opportunities" in education—then immediately attacked the only state program that actually provides them. The position reveals exactly what the education establishment fears: parents walking away from a system that has failed them.
Figures, a Democrat elected in 2024 to a newly drawn majority-Black district, fielded questions at a packed church worship center in Lowndes County, according to AL.com. A resident asked about the state's teacher shortage—an estimated 3,413 unfilled positions last year. Figures said he wants the federal government to keep funding early childhood and K-12 education, then turned to school choice.
He said he supported giving families more choices. But Alabama's CHOOSE Act, which provides students $7,000 for private school or homeschool expenses? That he opposes.
"What's going to be left in public schools is the population of students most at risk," Figures said, as AL.com reported. "And teachers are not going to want to teach in those environments, which means that our public schools are going to fall further and further behind."
His solution: redirect the $175 million slated for the CHOOSE Act back into traditional public schools—the same institutions that produced 3,413 unfilled teaching positions in a single year.
The logic is circular. The public system is failing, so families want out. Figures acknowledges they deserve choices, then works to eliminate the only mechanism that provides them. The CHOOSE Act doesn't defund public schools—it gives families leverage. Leverage is what the establishment cannot tolerate.
Figures also addressed a proposed 1,050-acre data center in Hayneville, asking residents if they wanted it. When they said no, he responded: "Well, I'm with the people of Lowndes County." He pointed to a $1.5 billion Google data center in north Alabama as an example of development done right, and said companies need to pick sites where communities actually want them. He also noted the stakes: "These data centers will facilitate hundreds of trillions of dollars of economic activity, but that activity is currently not in our backyard. That's a problem."
On SNAP benefits, Figures said about 81,000 Alabama residents lost benefits due to the Big Beautiful Bill passed in 2025 with Republican support. He voted against it, saying the benefit of tax cuts did not outweigh the cost of cuts to Medicaid and other services.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, Republican Rep. Max Miller remains in his reelection race after missing the withdrawal deadline, despite his ex-wife's domestic abuse allegations and calls from his own father-in-law, Senator Bernie Moreno, to step aside. President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson have stood by Miller, CNBC reported. The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation.
Back in Alabama, Republicans will choose their nominee for the 2nd District in an August 11 primary. The race will test whether voters buy Figures's version of "choice"—the kind where you're free to choose, so long as you choose the failing school the government already runs.
The open question: when a system produces thousands of empty classrooms and families demand an exit, does protecting the institution count as representing the people—or protecting the bureaucracy from them?
