It's official: Just days after returning from spring break, members of the Missouri House have assigned SJR 39—legislation that would send a constitutional amendment to the ballot allowing a license to discriminate against LGBT Missourians—to the House Committee on Emerging Issues.

ENVIRONMENT
It is no longer a secret radioactive waste has contaminated multiple sites in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Our federal government has a responsibility to make every resident aware of previously disposed of radioactive waste and provide resolutions to families that are negatively affected.

Climate Change is causing Mother Earth to get warmer. There are many indications that lead to this occurrence. Congress must work with leaders around the world to design a unified plan.

In today's world, Maria understands the environment has everything to do with the manner in which society progresses.

EDUCATION
Every child deserves a chance to be the best. As a congresswoman, Maria will continue to advocate for resources to cultivate the best in all of our children. Maria has fought hard for policies that would ensure quality education. As a state senator and former school board member in University City, Maria rolled up her sleeves, put in long hours and hard work into building consensus in the general assembly.

For Maria, education is the cornerstone of all building blocks in a sustainable community.

HEALTH & SOCIAL EQUITY
There is a strong and direct correlation between the social conditions of a community and the health status of that same community. Maria recalls her time on the streets of Ferguson talking to young people and second chancers who had very little hope. She also recalls the cries of students and parents wanting to attend fully accredited school districts. And as large corporations pay hefty bonuses to shareholders, St. Louis families are paying the price for bad decisions made during and after World War II.

It is impossible to have a healthy society if we are not willing to ensure social equity across the board. The sustainability of the St. Louis region depends on innovation that will give every individual an ability to realize the same dreams as those who come from privileged backgrounds.

Maria believes that all things are possible as long as everyone is willing to work hard on their own individual behaviors and acknowledge that each person has a unique life experience that should be respected, honored and uplifted.

INFRASTRUCTURE & THE ECONOMY
When it comes to state-of-the-art infrastructure, our national security may depend on it. Maria believes we should invest in our crumbling infrastructure. It is important the federal government help offset some of the costs burdening local and state governments.

Also, in today's society, individuals will have multiple jobs. We need to ensure every person has access to an evolving job market. Too many people have been displaced while transitioning into other fields of employment. This is causing enormous strain on St. Louis families, who far too often double or triple up their living quarters.

Maria is committed to pushing for solutions that reduce the number of displaced workers in the St. Louis region. She is committed to helping families live independently without them worrying about the availability of basic resources.

Edwards’ positions on trade, banking, Social Security and Israel, among others, differentiate her from her liberal opponent Rep. Van Hollen, who has taken on the mantle of the insider candidate after racking up endorsements from Maryland’s political establishment and large donations, increasingly from business interests. For example, Van Hollen has been the recent recipient of more than $900,000 from the National Association of Realtors. In contrast, the largest amount of Edwards’ outside money comes from the legendary Emily’s List, whose goal, given the still embarrassing lack of women in public office in America, is to get women elected and protect reproductive rights.

Running Like Bernie

There are many ways Donna Edwards’ campaign resembles Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Both Van Hollen and Clinton are the favorites of the corporate media, party insiders and the deep-pocketed donors who pump a lot of money into campaigns. Edwards, like Sanders, has established a successful grassroots funding operation. She has been speaking to the hopes of an electorate fed up with insider politics that sets the bar very low for what can be accomplished. Van Hollen, like Clinton, has tried to position himself as the practical candidate who can wheel and deal and get things done.

Even the Washington Post sees the Sanders and Edwards analogy: “Edwards has pointed to Van Hollen’s support for past free-trade deals as a mark against him, just as Sanders has criticized Clinton’s support for trade pacts while she was first lady, a senator and secretary of state. Sanders says Clinton is beholden to big banks and Wall Street, and Edwards repeatedly refers to Van Hollen as a 'Wall Street Democrat'—although neither she nor Van Hollen is taking funds from Wall Street political action committees.”

(AlterNet) Over the past week, Bernie Sanders racked up six wins out of seven primary contests, winning 92 delegates more than his rival Hillary Clinton to chip into her pledged delegate lead. While not an existential shift in the race, the momentum has changed in Sanders’ favor, especially since he won the last three primaries—Hawaii, Washington state and Alaska—with between 70 and 82 percent of the vote.

You, however, would hardly have noticed had you been watching cable news the night of the Saturday primaries. Both MSNBC and CNN forwent live election coverage on arguably Sanders’ biggest night of the year, instead deciding to air a normally scheduled prison reality show and a “documentary” on Jesus.

The race is far from over, yet most of the major cable networks have all but moved on. Clinton’s lead, while considerable, is far from insurmountable. Indeed, the netting of 66 delegates Saturday night pulls Sanders to within 268 pledged delegates of the former secretary of State—with 2,073 delegates yet to be awarded.

(The Nation) Does Bernie Sanders’s economic program amount to pie-in-the-sky nonsense? The short answer is no. All of his major proposals are grounded in solid economic reasoning and evidence.

But that hasn’t stopped a major swath of leading liberal economists and commentators to insist otherwise. Paul Krugman has led these attacks from his New York Times perch, charging repeatedly that Sanders makes “outlandish economic claims,” embraces “deep voodoo” economics, is “not ready for prime time,” and so forth. A recent Washington Post article by columnist Steven Pearlstein cites several other liberal economists criticizing Sanders’s support for Scandinavian-style social democratic policies, concluding that his program “promises all the good parts of the Scandinavian model without any of the bad parts.”

Sanders’s economic agenda certainly represents a dramatic departure from what has come out of mainstream Democratic Party circles for a generation, to say nothing, of course, of the Republicans. The key elements of Sanders’s program include a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer healthcare system; an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour; free tuition at public colleges and universities, to be financed by taxing Wall Street transactions; opposition to trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that have weakened the wage-bargaining power of US workers; large-scale public investments to build a clean-energy economy and rebuild the crumbling US infrastructure; and strong Wall Street regulations to promote productive investments and job creation over casino capitalism.