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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Opponents: Anti-Regulation Bill Would Hurt Missourians

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Tuesday, May 23, 2017   

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate is being challenged by consumer groups and some business leaders.

Proponents say the Regulatory Accountability Act will ensure that health and environmental regulations are transparent and based on the best available science. Critics say the law's true purpose is to make it impossible for federal agencies to pass any new protections.

Eric Friedman, a managing member of the group, Broadband Collaborative, says this is an effort to water down rules that protect people from polluted air and water.

"Lead, tainted drinking water like we've experienced in Michigan, or we've had the same problem in St. Louis schools," he says. "And across the country, we have these issues: asbestos issues, pesticides."

National environmental groups say the measure essentially would ban agencies from keeping pesticides and bacteria such as salmonella out of food, keeping lead out of water, and preventing exposure to known carcinogens such as asbestos.

The measure cleared the Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee last week.

Friedman says this legislation also would hamper the fight against the opioid epidemic. There were more than a thousand drug-overdose deaths in Missouri last year, and Missouri doesn't have a state-run electronic database used to track the prescribing and dispensing of opioids.

"It's really an epidemic at this point in time," he adds. "We need to do something about it. We're the only state that doesn't have an opioid database to monitor opioid use and prescriptions."

According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the bill would replace an already industry-friendly rulemaking process with something even worse than one that currently only applies to the Federal Trade Commission; an agency that hasn't attempted to enact a major rule in decades.


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