“I don’t have a tribe,” Kinzinger told me when we spoke earlier this month. “The good thing is, I don’t really care. The only reason this hurts me is that it reminds me of how frigging crazy the Republican Party has become. It’s not my tribe anymore.”…

I asked Kinzinger if he thought he had been naive about the people who now lead the party. “You know, you always think that everyone has a red line. No matter how much politics a person can play, there’s a red line that people can’t cross. I was naive. There are some people who only care about access to power. I’m still coming to terms with this.”

Kinzinger, along with another apostate, Liz Cheney, serves on the House committee investigating the events of January 6. His decision to join this Democratic-led committee caused some of his Republican colleagues to worry (or to publicly perform worry) that he had become a spy in their midst.

“Madison Cawthorn can invoke coming bloodshed, and Paul Gosar can flirt with white nationalism,” he said, naming two of his more extremist colleagues, “and they’re signing a letter asking to have me kicked out of the caucus. This is how far the Republican Party has fallen. They call me a RINO”—a Republican in Name Only—“but I haven’t changed. The Republican Party has changed into an authoritarian Trump organization. They’re the RINOs. Trump is a RINO.”