Maybe Demarris should have seen it coming.The 11 -year-old LINC student knew that he and his King Elementary classmates were special invitees because they were in an after-school coding program. He knew the bus had delivered them to an engineering firm — Burns & McDonnell. He saw that the featured speaker getting ready to meet them was wearing her blue NASA-like jumpsuit.But it wasn’t until one of the dramatic slides on the big screen showed the selfie — the woman in blue, smiling with her hair afloat, and a giant, shimmering earth curving behind her — that he realized what was happening.

They were two days away from launching the 2026 legislative session when a half dozen Missouri lawmakers huddled with LINC leadership to survey the challenging landscape ahead.