Alabama residents fear federal funding could vanish if Figures loses seat

Shomari Figures said he secured $50 million in federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure across Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, and residents in south Alabama are now asking whether that kind of money would still flow if his seat disappears.

Their concern sits at the center of Alabama’s five-year redistricting battle, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2023 that the state’s congressional map likely diluted Black voting power and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. A special master then drew the current 2nd District as an opportunity district, and Figures won the seat in 2024 after the court-ordered redraw, defeating Republican Caroleene Dobson.

The fight escalated again in 2026, when the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to move forward with a disputed congressional map. Alabama officials and Republicans moved to restore a version that could eliminate or reshape the district, tightening the stakes for a seat that has become a test case for race, representation and political power in Washington.

Figures responded by saying the “Voting Rights Act is dead” and warning that the Court’s conservative majority was allowing discriminatory district maps to stand. He has also said he expects courts to keep the redistricting injunction in place, even as the legal battle continues to churn through Alabama and Washington.

The material stakes are immediate for communities tied to the district. Figures’ office highlighted the $50 million provision in the Water Resources Development Act of 2026 as money aimed at critical water and wastewater needs across the 2nd District, a region where federal dollars often shape whether local projects get built at all. If the district is redrawn away or Figures loses reelection, residents fear the political leverage that helped secure that funding could disappear with him.

That anxiety has turned a legal fight over district lines into a question of concrete access: who speaks for south Alabama in the U.S. House, and whether that voice still carries enough weight to deliver federal spending back home. For a district drawn in response to a Supreme Court finding of racial dilution, the next map could decide not only who wins elections but how much influence the region keeps in Washington.