Adam Kinzinger

Overview

Adam Kinzinger spent twelve years in Congress and left it in 2023, but his most active fight is happening right now. In September 2026, his organization Country First expanded an advertising campaign called “Reveille and Rally” aimed at keeping military personnel and National Guard troops away from polling places in the November election — a response to President Trump’s refusal to rule out deploying them (Rockford Register Star). Profiles of Kinzinger tend to freeze him in 2022, as one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack; the current campaign, running through Election Day, is the verified story his profiles aren’t telling.

“Reveille and Rally”

Country First, the national advocacy group Kinzinger founded, launched the new phase of the campaign in late September 2026, according to reporting by the Rockford Register Star. The campaign’s goal is to educate voters and encourage public engagement around keeping the U.S. military and National Guard nonpartisan (Rockford Register Star). The trigger was Trump’s refusal to rule out deploying National Guard troops or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places in November — a prospect the organization says could erode public trust in the armed forces and pull the institution into partisan disputes (Rockford Register Star).

Kinzinger framed the fight as a continuation of the one he left Congress over: “I’m fed up with this abuse of power and the constant desire by Trump to undermine our democracy. I never thought that five years after January 6th, I would still be in this fight, defending the integrity of our democracy” (Rockford Register Star). And he put the campaign’s position in the plainest possible terms: “Keeping the National Guard and the military nonpartisan, and keeping them away from the ballot box, isn’t a partisan position — it’s patriotic. In America, we do not send troops to guard ballot boxes. Period. And we will not normalize armed forces at polling places on Election Day. Not in Michigan. Not in Georgia. Not anywhere. Not now. Not ever” (Rockford Register Star). Earlier phases of the campaign had focused on explaining the National Guard’s role and highlighting veterans’ perspectives on maintaining a nonpartisan military; Country First said the newest phase would remain active through Election Day (Rockford Register Star).

Congress and the January 6 committee

Kinzinger represented Illinois’s 11th and then 16th congressional districts from 2011 until the first few days of 2023, and became one of the most recognizable members of the House as one of the two Republicans who served on the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol (NPR). In 2021 he decided not to run for reelection — the same year he founded Country First, “a nonprofit, bipartisan organization that seeks funding and support from moderates from the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as independents,” with a mission statement that includes defeating threats to American democracy (NPR). In an October 2023 Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, he said his 12 years in Congress and his time in the military had led to the moment he agreed to join the committee: he could make “the easy choice” and lay low, or go out “doing the right thing, even if it means standing alone” (NPR).

From the Air Force to the committee room

Before Congress, Kinzinger served in the Air Force, flying missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America and Guam; by 2023 he was a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard (NPR). The military background runs through his public life — including his post-Congress role as a senior political commentator for CNN, which NPR identified him as in October 2023 (NPR). That month he also published Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, the memoir he told Fresh Air was the inside story of how his party and his faith had been, in his telling, hijacked by extremists (NPR).

The Carlson “traitor” moment

In February 2024, when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released his interview with Vladimir Putin, Kinzinger called Carlson a “traitor” for conducting it — a sharp reaction that made him part of the bipartisan backlash that also included White House criticism and European calls for a travel ban (Al Jazeera). It was the kind of unvarnished attack on a fellow conservative figure that had become his signature after leaving the House.

The personal cost of the January 6 stand

Kinzinger told Fresh Air he saw the violence coming and armed himself for it. He read the threats against him on Twitter, warned Kevin McCarthy on a conference call of Republican members that convincing people the election was stolen would produce violence — McCarthy’s reply, he said, was “OK, Adam, operator next caller” — and took his gun to the Capitol on January 6, something he said he had never done before because members were usually so well protected (NPR). What followed became one of the most documented cases of political estrangement in modern Congress: voicemails saying “I hope you die quickly,” threats against his wife and newborn child — “we know where your family is” — a letter from his father’s cousins disowning him and accusing him of serving in “the devil’s army” for joining the committee, and a text from his own Iraq copilot saying he was ashamed to have ever served with him (NPR). For a time he had a 24-hour security detail in Washington (NPR).

The break with his party’s leadership had older roots. He described a moment when Mike Johnson — later House speaker — approached him with a clipboard of signatures for the amicus brief supporting Texas’s lawsuit to throw out other states’ 2020 election results. “I just kind of looked at him. I’m like, Mike, you know who I am, right?… Like, there’s no way. This is insane,” Kinzinger recalled; he refused to sign (NPR). By October 2023, watching the speaker chaos from outside, he said “0.00%” of him wished he were still in the House — except, he added, to put “a very hard line down in support of funding for Ukraine” (NPR).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not give Kinzinger’s birth date or birthplace, which no fully-read source confirmed this session. It does not detail his 2024 election-cycle activity, such as candidate endorsements, which was not verified with a fully-read source. It identifies him as a CNN senior political commentator as of October 2023, the most recent fully-read source confirming the role; it does not assert he still holds it today. It reports no budget or ad-buy figures for the “Reveille and Rally” campaign, which no source provided. And it notes that the Rockford Register Star’s September 2026 campaign article carried a USA Today disclosure that it was produced with AI assistance, with journalists involved in every step of review, editing and publishing.