PwnallthethingsSo this is a fun little tweet by Adam Kinzinger. But no. Mr Kinzinger is not still a congressman.
More fun tho is that *nobody* is a Representative right now
Kinzinger lost his status by direct force of the 20th Amendment. That put him out of the job at 12:00 on January 3rd.
But none of the newly elected members have yet taken their oaths--they're waiting to elect the Speaker--and under Article IV that means they aren't full members
Which leads to a fun question: if there are no Representatives in the House of Representatives ... why are they even allowed to vote for a Speaker in the first place?
The right answer is probably "you don't need to know, this is arcane weird stuff, and they'll eventually elect a Speaker and it'll all work out"
But if you do want to dive in, here's why
https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/the-house-has-no-members-and-the
The House has No Members and the Bootstrapping of Power
Over at Dog Shirt Daily—the awfully named, but otherwise great daily publication by Ben Wittes—Ben has a really interesting question that he proceeds quickly to not answer: does the House have any Representatives? The motivation for his question is this post by Adam Kinzinger
David Waldman@Pwnallthethings I think the right answer is that Members-elect are recognized for admission to the floor and for voting privileges by authority of the Clerk of the House, who is a Constitutional officer of the House with a term that ends upon the election(by the majority) of her successor.
Some rights reserved@KagroX @Pwnallthethings this seems to make the most intuitive sense. The question then is, what happens if the Clerk goes rogue?
@stealthisbook @Pwnallthethings Then the Clerk goes rogue.
I suppose you then have to worry if she takes the Sergeant at-Arms with her.
If they both go rogue, then you also have to start wondering whether they’re really rogues.