As the partial government paralysis continues, with no end in sight, Catherine Cortez Masto is ready to put an end to it right away.
The attorney-at-law senator from Nevada is one of only two Democrats to repeatedly vote with Republicans and independent Maine Sen. Angus King to keep the federal government up and running.
Not only does she antagonize her Senate colleagues with her contrarian stance, but she also places herself squarely at odds with the animating impulse of her party’s political base: Stop Trump! Give no quarter! It’s time! This is the fight!
Cortez Masto leaves no doubt.
“I’ve been very consistent about the cost of a shutdown and its impact on Americans and that I believe we need to work in a bipartisan way to find solutions to what we’re seeing right now, which is this looming health care crisis,” Cortez Masto said from Washington.
“And I think we can do that by keeping the government open. I don’t think we should do it by trading the pain of one group of Americans for another.”
Unlike the other Democratic defector, eccentric Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, Cortez Masto has not developed a reputation for partisan heresy, nor has he antagonized his party peers by playing football with President Trump and the MAGA movement.
Despite her temporary alliance with the Republican Party, she relentlessly criticizes the president and the Republican position on health care, the issue at the heart of the anti-lockdown fight.
“Of course we must resist Trump’s attacks on our families and our country,” she said. “I have been one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s disastrous trade and tariff policies.”
Her break with fellow Democrats, she suggested, is not a question of ends but rather of means.
It is entirely possible, Cortez Masto insisted, to keep the government open for business and, at the same time, overcome party differences on health care, including, very imminently, an end to subsidies that have kept insurance costs from skyrocketing.
It comes down to negotiation, trust and compromise, which Cortez Masto says is still possible – even in these times of rabid partisanship.
“This is what Congress is built on,” she said. “Congress is built on compromise, working together across the aisle to get things done. I still believe in that.”
Although she emphasized – with much understatement – “some members of the administration and some of my colleagues” disagree.
Not to mention a large number of Democratic activists who believe that anything other than imprisoning Trump and sending the entire Republican-led Congress to a remote desert island amounts to cowardly capitulation.
Nevada, where Cortez Masto was born and raised, is a state that was long Republican red before turning blue for a time, starting with Barack Obama in 2008. It returned to red under Trump in 2024.
Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2016, replacing former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after the Democrat retired.
Six years later, when she sought re-election, Cortez Masto was widely considered the Democrats’ most threatened incumbent. She wasn’t as powerful or as important as Reid. Inflation was raging and Nevada was still suffering from the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
His opponent was a mid-range Republican, Adam Laxalt, a failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the architects of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. He also seemed to have a soft spot for the January 6, 2021, rioters.
Yet Cortez Masto barely beat him, winning by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than a million votes cast. In retrospect, this result could be seen as a harbinger of Trump’s success in winning the state after twice losing Nevada.
Cortez Masto will then be re-elected in 2028, which is politically very far away. By then, the closure will be long forgotten. (And probably for a long time.)
Her focus, she said, is the here and now and, in particular, the economic effect of the shutdown, at a time when Nevada is already feeling the negative consequences of Trump’s trade and immigration policies. Las Vegas, which relies on tourism, has seen a notable crisis, and Cortez Masto suggested the shutdown was only making things worse.
That, however, did not deter Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Jacky Rosen, who repeatedly voted alongside nearly every other Democrat to keep the government shut down until Republicans relented.
“Nevadans sent me here to fight for them,” Rosen said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Don’t give in.”
When asked about the crack, Cortez Masto responded evenly and diplomatically. “She’s a good friend…Our goal is to fight for Nevada and we are,” she said. “We both do it in different ways.”
So negotiation. Bipartisanship. Compromise.
What makes Cortez Masto believe that Trump, who has shown little regard for Congress and the courts, can be trusted to honor any deal Democrats make with Republicans to reopen the government and solve the health care crisis she sees?
“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? We know what he does,” she replied. He “flouts the law when it comes…to assuming the role of legislators and appropriating funds as he pleases…So, of course, no, you can’t trust him.”
“But it’s there. What we need to understand is how to work with your Republican colleagues to get things done.”
Cortez Masto dryly noted that Congress is, in fact, a separate branch of government with its own power and authority. Republicans have ceded both to Trump and if they really want to fix the problems, she said, and do more than the president is asking, they “need to come out and pass bipartisan legislation to beat back this administration.”
“We must govern,” Cortez Masto said. “We have to work together.”
Wouldn’t that be something.
