He made history in Congress - then the Supreme Court changed its mind

He made history in Congress - then the Supreme Court changed its mindImage source, Getty ImagesByBrandon DrenonReporting fromAlabamaPublished27 minutes agoWhen a glass door shattered on the arm of 19-year-old De'Mari Benham, with blood running down his limb and with few other options, he was rushed to the fire department in a friend's car.Firefighters bandaged him and encouraged the Tuskegee University student to go to a hospital the next town over to receive stitches and medicine."I decided not to go," he said. "Both because it's far and because I just simply don't have the funds."Image source, Brandon Drenon/BBCImage caption, De'Mari Benham believes the state is trying to curb black Alabamians voting rights. "This means a lot," he says.It's a common problem. In Tuskegee, a rural Alabama city with less than 9,000 people, over 80% of them African American, nearly one in three people live in poverty. There's no general hospital. No 24-hour emergency-care clinic. The fire department is where many people go, but the building is not fit for purpose."We get calls, crazy calls, for all kinds of things," says Dondrell Hopson, the fire department's captain. "Treating bullet wounds. Guys bleeding out."When Shomari Figures was elected to the US House of Representatives, becoming the first black person to represent Tuskegee in Congress in modern history - he sought to help.Image source, Brandon Drenon/BBCImage caption, Tuskegee Fire Department Chief Willie Smith says "we need a building".Barely a year after his election in 2024, Figures helped secure $1m (£746,885) from the US government to help build a civic centre in Tuskegee. It will serve as a fallout shelter against deadly storms and also house the city's police department and the fire department that came to Benham's aid.But just as federal funds were arriving, the political winds shifted.This April, the US Supre...