Should Congress Defund ICE?
What Next
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rep. Adam Smith is the ranking member of the House committee that’s supposed to have oversight on the Department of Defense—yes, that’s what he still calls it. But from strikes on Venezuela to ICE surges in Minneapolis, “oversight” isn’t a key function of Congress these days.
Guest: Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, representative from Washington’s Ninth District.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just a heads up, there is a touch of spicy language in this episode. |
| 0:09.4 | Adam Smith has been in Congress for a long time. |
| 0:13.7 | He represents Washington State, parts of Seattle. |
| 0:17.2 | You've been in Congress since 1996. |
| 0:20.1 | Am I getting that right? |
| 0:25.6 | Yeah, well, I got elected in 96, technically I didn't get into Congress until January of 97. But yes, 29 years at this point. |
| 0:28.6 | Representative Smith has heard your arguments about Congress not working, by the way. |
| 0:35.6 | He knows you think his colleagues are dragging their feet, being |
| 0:39.0 | dysfunctional. He sees it differently. You know, I got people all the time yelling at me. How come |
| 0:44.5 | Congress can't get along? How can he be a governed thing? We're trying to govern 350 million |
| 0:49.3 | people. And most of the people saying this to me can't get along with half of their immediate |
| 0:53.7 | family. |
| 0:55.2 | So if you say we're dysfunctional, it's like we're trying to manage a family of 350 million people. |
| 1:00.9 | We're not dysfunctional. You're underestimating the degree of difficulty. |
| 1:07.0 | The degree of difficulty for Smith is especially high. |
| 1:14.1 | He's a moderate dem from a deep blue dot. |
| 1:19.8 | When he gets to Washington, he is flung headlong into a fight against the Trump administration. |
| 1:22.7 | So I wanted to talk to him about that. |
| 1:25.8 | You're the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, |
| 1:46.8 | which is kind of an interesting place to be right now, given that the U.S. is claiming it's running Venezuela. And as we speak, there's a real open question about what might take place in Iran because there have been protests for the last week or so. And Donald Trump has alluded to maybe doing something there. Can I just talk to you about your process at this moment? Like, last week after Venezuela happened, Nicholas Maduro was |
| 1:53.2 | arrested, you attended a briefing on Venezuela with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Was that |
| 2:00.0 | informative? Yeah. I mean, it wasn't as informative as it |
... |
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