Politics

Both Nevada senators spurned their party. They were reading the room.

Published

8 months ago

November 14, 2025

In breaking ranks to end the federal government shutdown this week, Nevada’s two Democratic senators showcased the shifting politics of the once solidly blue state, home to a diverse, working-class population that relies heavily on tourism.

In the national battle for party expansion, Republicans have the edge in the Silver State.

Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen joined an octet of members in the Senate Democratic Caucus who backed ending the shutdown. Their home state politics made their gambit an electoral calculation and an economic necessity, even as it angered some Nevada Democrats, according to interviews with more than a dozen political strategists, staffers and elected officials in the state.

“Nevada isn’t a blue state — it’s a swing state with a Democratic lean and a Republican trend line,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who focuses on the Southwest. “Both senators are reading the room, and brinksmanship doesn’t play well with the middle.”

The GOP advantage in Nevada has been building for several years. Republicans overtook Democrats in voter registration for the first time in nearly two decades this year, the result of a dedicated campaign from the Nevada Republican Party. Polls show GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo with a slight lead in his reelection bid, which will be one of the most competitive gubernatorial races next year. And Republicans are trying to flip Democrats’ three House seats in Nevada next year. In 2024, Donald Trump became the first Republican to win the state in 20 years, beating Kamala Harris by 3.1 points, while Rosen won reelection by just 1 point.

“Nevada has really tightened up,” said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist from the state .

Republicans and Democrats are fiercely courting Nevada’s working class. In 2024, Trump appealed to the state’s service, hospitality and construction industries with promises to end taxes on tips and overtime — both policies that were passed in the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” And his campaign also made significant investment in reaching Latinos, who make up one in five registered voters.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping that the sluggish economy, GOP-backed healthcare cuts and aggressive deportations under Trump will help them win back anxious Nevadans.

“If you hear someone who is saying we are not going to tax your tips, that’s compelling,” said Washoe County Commission Chair Alexis Hill, who is running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. “That economic message is consistently what we need to drive home as Democrats and get away from that corporate message.”

Nevada’s economy is tethered to the tourism industry, fueled by hourly-wage hospitality workers. The state has seen a massive downturn in travel this year after major post-pandemic increases, which — coupled with a sharp dropoff in construction jobs — sparked concern among economists and local officials, who largely gauge the health of the local economy on its tourism industry.

The state’s heavy reliance on federal aid also makes it more susceptible to partisan swings. The freeze on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program resulting from the government shutdown hurt the 15 percent of Nevadans who receive SNAP benefits, among the highest shares of any state. And recent disruptions around air travel significantly affected flights coming and going from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. On Saturday, the airport recorded 198 flight delays.

Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the politically influential Culinary Union, praised the two senators for “clearly fighting for working-class folks,” but noted now is the time to “get the government going and get the benefits moving.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about who is going to be in the corner of working-class folks,” he said. “The Democrats’ ship has been wandering the last few years, and the voters have been very clear about that.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., speaks to supporters during an election watch party Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Both Cortez Masto and Rosen signaled they sided with Republicans on ending the shutdown because of its severe effects on workers. Cortez Masto, who also voted to end the shutdown over a month ago, defended her recent vote by citing the pinch felt by small businesses and other workers. Rosen, meanwhile, said she hit a breaking point in recent days as she saw the effect of “fully withholding SNAP benefits and gutting our tourism industry by grinding air travel to a halt.”

“How do you stay the course when people are rummaging through the trash for food because Donald Trump took away their SNAP benefits?” said one Rosen aide, granted anonymity to speak openly. “At some point, you’re hurting the people you’re trying to help by not putting an end to the Trump cruelty.”

Rosen is up for reelection in 2030; Cortez Masto in 2028.

Scott Gavorsky, the GOP Elko County chair, predicted the senators would have dealt with blowback from voters had they prolonged the shutdown, especially in areas that have trended to the right, like in the rural region he represents that helped Lombardo flip the governorship in 2022. “Memories are long out here,” he said.

But the pair is already facing backlash. Some Nevada Democrats voiced frustration with their decision to break from the caucus after Democrats stuck together for over a month.

Democratic State Assemblymember Selena La Rue Hatch said she’s heard from many constituents in her swing district in Washoe County, which encompasses Reno, over their “concern about whether we are actually putting the brakes on a reckless authoritarian administration.”

“I have heard overwhelming shock and dismay and concern that we have now given up the fight, and what are we getting out of it?” she said.

A Democratic state party strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely, called the agreement with Republicans to vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits at the heart of Democrats’ shutdown negotiations a bonus.

“At the end of the day it isn’t focused on political tactics, it’s focused on ending this pain,” the strategist said.

The tourism-dependent state experienced the nation’s highest unemployment rates during the 2008 recession and 2020 pandemic shutdown, after it had become one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation from 1970 to 2008.

Trump’s 2015 ascent came just in time to exploit Nevadans’ lingering pessimism, said Andrew Woods, the director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Center for Business and Economic Research. Then, when Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak shut down Nevada’s casinos for 78 days during the 2020 pandemic, the state’s unemployment rate ballooned again, reaching 28 percent in April 2020.

“That sense of security was taken away,” Woods said. “It made the state purple.”

Republicans are making a big play in Nevada in next year’s midterms, hoping to flip three seats including the one held by Democrat Susie Lee, who represents many workers on the Las Vegas strip.

But Trump’s Nevada victory was fueled by economic dissatisfaction, and recent polling suggests Nevadans aren’t much more satisfied now. In an October poll from Noble Predictive Insights, 50 percent of respondents said the state is worse now than it was four years ago, and just 24 percent said it is better. Their top issues were affordable housing and inflation.

“The electorate is definitely more driven by economic anxiety than ideology these days,” said Mike Noble, the pollster.

Politics

‘It’s not very often that you get, like, really great news from Bosnia’

Published

13 minutes ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

No matter the result on Wednesday night, the roughly 60,000 Bosnian Americans who call St. Louis home — reportedly the largest population of Bosnians outside Bosnia and Herzegovina — will have something to celebrate. Many, however, are unapologetically cheering for their homeland when it takes on the country they now call home.

“They are like dressing up in the jerseys, singing the anthem,” said Ibro Tucakovic, a Bosnian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in 1998 and became the first Bosnian immigrant to seek elected office in Missouri. “Looking at my daughter, when we won against Qatar, she was crying. And so basically they, they can see the happiness in their parents’ eyes, because it means so much to us. So the kids are basically just going nuts over it.”

Mirhad Hasanovic, a Bosnian immigrant who came to the U.S. in July 2001 and is now a legislative staffer running to represent parts of St. Louis’s South County in the Missouri statehouse, said it was “unfortunate” that his two favorite countries are playing against one another so early on in the tournament.

“For Bosnians, this is huge,” he said. “We’re a very small country, so just to be able to be at the World Cup and compete is an achievement in itself. “Kids grow up at the age of three or four, they start playing, they start watching, they start going to all the leagues, so the excitement level is out the roof.”

For refugees whose memories of Bosnia revolve around war and genocide, its first-ever appearance in the knockout rounds has become a way to reconnect with the country they fled.

“It’s not very often that you get, like, really great news from Bosnia,” said Adna Karamehic-Oates, director of the Center for Bosnian Studies at Saint Louis University. “People want good stories that come out of Bosnia, and that’s why they’re so happy.”

Politics

Vance contradicts Trump about bipartisan cooperation on housing bill

Published

39 minutes ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

As a rule, JD Vance seems to go out of his way to say whatever Donald Trump wants him to say, but from time to time, contradictions emerge between the president and the vice president.

Take the recently passed housing bill, for example, which arrived at the White House earlier this week.

As part of an interview Tuesday night with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, the Ohio Republican said, “Frankly, Laura, I would love it if Democrats were willing — you know, not that they will agree with Republicans all the time — but if they were willing to work with us on lowering housing prices, on lowering gas prices, on actually making the lives of American citizens better. You know, we could have some real bipartisan compromise. That’s not what they’re talking about.”

I realize the vice president must be very busy, but it really isn’t that difficult to keep up with the basics of current events. In this case, when Vance said Democrats are unwilling to work with Republicans on priorities such as “lowering housing prices,” he turned reality on its head. It was literally last week when Democrats offered unanimous support for a bipartisan bill to address housing prices — legislation that members such as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts helped to write.

Democrats recognized that doing so would offer the GOP some election-season bragging rights, but Democrats did it anyway because they have prioritized governing and “actually making the lives of American citizens better” over partisan considerations.

But Vance didn’t just contradict reality; he also contradicted his boss.

Just one day before the vice president brazenly misled a national television audience, Trump was asked about the pending housing bill. “It’s very bipartisan; that means the Democrats like it,” the president saidwhile acknowledging that he hasn’t yet decided whether to sign it.

In other words, when Vance said policymakers “could have some real bipartisan compromise,” he seemed indifferent to the fact that we’ve already had some real bipartisan compromise — a detail that even Trump was willing to acknowledge a day earlier.

Whether the vice president will suffer for publicly contradicting the president remains to be seen.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

Bosnia’s starting lineup is also a map of its war

Published

43 minutes ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

BELGRADE, Serbia — The nearly four-year Bosnian war in the 1990s set off a massive wave of displacement, with a third of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s pre-war population permanently leaving the country as refugees.

Team captain Edin Džeko, a 40-year-old striker who left his native Sarajevo soon after the war, has recalled playing soccer in the lulls between the daily barrage of sniper fire that defined the siege of the Bosnian capital and says he could never have imagined becoming a world-class player after watching the football pitches in his neighborhood reduced to “fields of scorched earth.”

Bosnia’s squad reflects that postwar diaspora. Left back Sead Kolašinac was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1993 to a family that left after Bosnia descended into war. Right back Amar Dedić was born in Austria after his parents left northern Bosnia during the war, and midfielder Benjamin Tahirović in Sweden to refugees from besieged Sarajevo.

And then there is the so-called Milwaukee Messi: young forward Esmir Bajraktarević, who was born in a Wisconsin to parents born in the eastern town that gave its name to the Srebrenica genocide.