Appreciate the help, I do have spotlight keyboard shortcut set to something else and turned off (unchecked):
Side note: as I was going through my other keyboard shortcuts, I unchecked turned off these Mission Control related ones:
This helped me with a completely different app called Altab. I couldn't figure out why Alttab wouldn't let me use left or right arrows to navigate my windows as I hold down ⌘. I noticed the escaping worked on Alfred right after, but shortly after the issue started back again like it does.
It's very strange how escape will work on Alfred sometimes but then decide to not work moments later 😕