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.
Whey Standard@KagroX @Pwnallthethings wait, how is the clerk a constitutional officer? The position doesn’t appear once in the constitution.
@Whey_standard @Pwnallthethings The Clerk is one of the "other officers" elected under Art. I, sec. 2.
@KagroX @Pwnallthethings a constitutional officer is one whose office is explicitly established by the Constitution, one one whose office is merely authorized. Every officer would be a constitutional officer if the latter were true.
@Whey_standard @Pwnallthethings It's not "merely authorized." They're elected by resolution of the House, and are administered the same oath of office.
@KagroX @Pwnallthethings every federal official takes the same oath, being elected by the body doesn’t make one a “constitutional officer”, that’s not what the term means.