A congressional candidate in West Virginia said a critical thinking course she took at Marshall went beyond academics by helping her process past trauma.

Brit Aguirre, the Democratic candidate for West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District in the upcoming 2026 election and challenger to incumbent Republican Carol Miller, said her first-year seminar changed her entire life.

“I took, specifically, a critical thinking course, one of those silly classes that you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s so dumb to go through. Why can’t I just start my core classes?’” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said the critical thinking course helped her work through her trauma by making her realize her ability to make decisions and steer her life.

“When somebody said I can choose differently next time about the things I said and did, I’m like, ‘I have a choice to make different decisions,’” Aguirre said.

The critical thinking course was not the only one that impacted her during her time at Marshall. Aguirre said her time in an argumentation and debate class led her to change her views on issues, such as abortion. She said the debate course helped her discover her pro-choice views.

“What they taught is objectivity. I literally changed my view on abortion; I was very pro-life,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said those are just two examples of how her time at Marshall shaped her life, and it has made her feel a deep attachment to Marshall.

Aguirre is a native Appalachian who graduated from Marshall in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in communications studies. During her time at Marshall, she also spent time in the journalism department before switching back to communications studies.

“I switched to communications studies because I wanted to learn how to write speeches and decipher rhetoric,” Aguirre said. “In my life, that’s taken me many places with my degree and my trades because I’m also an advanced yoga teacher, a licensed massage therapist, entrepreneur and had a holistic health business.”

Aguirre said another one of her major testimonies from Marshall is the challenge of doing so after having just given birth to her child; she returned to school five and a half weeks after giving birth.

“I got pregnant when I was a sophomore, and I finished school,” Aguirre said. “I even had to go part-time to get through it, but I did it, and I did it with a baby, who is now in Huntington Middle, bringing him to classes with me.”

If elected to Congress, Aguirre said her top legislative priorities would be to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and to abolish ICE.

“We are in this situation with American imperialism and oligarchy because dark money took over politics, and money is equal to free speech constitutionally, and that is completely not okay,” Aguirre said. “Citizens United is the reason for that, which says that corporations have the same say as people, and they’re the same thing as people, and that is not the case.”

Another legislative priority Aguirre would focus on is rebuilding infrastructure, a project she said would be funded through her proposal for a “Jim Justice Tax Recovery Act.”

“In this proposal, we hold anybody accountable who has major tax liens, like Jim Justice, and we take 20% of what they acquire, and we invest it back into states’ infrastructure who qualify,” Aguirre said. “West Virginia would automatically qualify because we have like a D plus on our infrastructure.”

Under Aguirre’s plan, she said the money could also be used for other purposes, such as abolishing tolls on the West Virginia Turnpike.

“You can condemn tolls too with that money and shut down the tolls. We’d buy back our roads from these out-of-state carpetbagging people who own our roads,” Aguirre said. “That wasn’t part of the original plan; people from Pennsylvania own our turnpike. This would give us an opportunity to buy back our roads, or condemn tolls, fix our bridges.”

She said the funds from this plan would be focused specifically on Appalachia and other rural communities.

Aguirre said she would focus on staying in the community if elected to Congress as she’s already been doing through her volunteer work, including running warming shelters, a local recycling project and volunteering with the Department of Environmental Protection in multiple counties.

“I’ve committed to never forgetting my Appalachian roots because I start from the ground up,” Aguirre said. “I’m going to have to be around, so I earn the right to ask for your vote. I don’t just ask for it. I show you what I’m doing and then I say, ‘Hey, I’m going to Congress. Let’s do this other thing and send me to Congress, so Appalachia actually has a say because it’s very silent right now.’”

Aguirre said many Americans share the same needs, and there is a sense of unity brought about by social media and connectivity, especially in the face of rising inflation and crackdowns by ICE.

“We’re all coming together in unity. We are,” Aguirre said. “It’s taken this long. People are saying they can’t stand it anymore.”

Ashton Pack can be contacted at [email protected].