“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.” – Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755)

A bill, pre-filed by Jamie Gragg (r):

HB 1624
Designates cashew chicken as the official dish of the state of Missouri
Sponsor: Gragg, Jamie (140)
Proposed Effective Date: 8/28/2024
LR Number: 2929H.01I
Last Action: 12/01/2023 – Prefiled (H)
[….]

10.249. Cashew chicken is selected for and shall be known as the official dish for the state of Missouri. Deep-fried cashew chicken was invented in 1963 in Springfield, Missouri by chef David Leong. An immigrant from China, Leong sought to make his native dishes more appealing to locals. Deep-fried cashew chicken is now served in more than seventy restaurants in the Springfield area.

But, wait, there’s more:

Cashew Chicken
Show me elected officials who should Log Off!

CONNER KERRIGAN
DEC 4, 2023

Rep. Sarah Unsicker, as of this writing, is currently the main character of Missouri politics Twitter (I’m sorry, I keep trying to call it X and it makes the skin on my typing fingers crawl).

It’s hard to find where all of this started, but as far as I can tell, it has something to do with Rep. Jamie Gragg’s HB 1624, which seeks to make Cashew Chicken the official state food of Missouri. Yes. That’s where all of this started. People on Twitter got upset about the bill, as people on Twitter are literally always getting hyper-upset about uncontroversial things. It’s part of the fun of the platform.

And that also could have been where all of this ended. We all could have had a nice laugh about a superfluous bill that will never become law and moved on with our lives. But I am here writing about it because Rep. Unsicker began pointing to tweets about cashew chicken and HB 1624 as examples of a literal foreign influence campaign, meant to distract us all from the real issues. She has multiple multi-tweet threads about how there is a grand conspiracy to divide democrats and hurt Rep. Unsicker, specifically, using anger over cashew chicken. Seriously.

[….]

Of course, there’s more. There’s always more:

Missouri Democrats Strip Unsicker of Committee Assignments
The Shrewsbury representative also faces calls to resign over her boasts about meeting with an alt-right troll
By Sarah Fenske on Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 8:38 am

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade has removed a St. Louis-area representative of her committee assignments over her association with a notorious alt-right troll.

State Representative Sarah Unsicker (D-Shrewsbury) has faced calls to resign from her fellow Democrats after an odd series of tweets this past week….

[….]

In short, what began with a weird series of tweets about cashew chicken has led to a big mess for a St. Louis County politician with statewide ambitions — and yet another indicator that anyone trying to achieve something in this world is best off never Tweeting or X-ing about anything — and especially about grabbing lemonade with alt-right trolls….

[….]