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After forty long days of political theater in Washington, two of the stars finally forgot their lines.
PBS NewsHour published an article explaining what eight Democratic senators — including Nevada’s U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen — had to say about finally breaking ranks to end the federal shutdown.
PBS, citing comments from Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, said the group had “put principle over personal politics.”
Let’s call it what it really was: panic.
The shutdown wasn’t new. The excuses were.
Excuse #1: “We did it for working families.”
Cortez Masto claimed she’d seen “lines at food banks like I haven’t seen since the pandemic.”
Rosen said the Trump administration was “inflicting unimaginable pain” by withholding food aid.
Nice try, but the facts don’t back that up.
The reason those programs stalled wasn’t Trump. It was Congress, which both of them belong to.
SNAP and other programs can’t pay out when lawmakers refuse to fund them.
That’s not “weaponizing power,” that’s just how math works.
Nevada’s own food banks, like Three Square in Las Vegas, said the spike in demand came from unpaid federal workers, not from Trump policy.
The same workers Rosen and Cortez Masto voted to leave hanging while they played chicken with their own leadership.
Excuse #2: “We had to protect Nevada’s tourism economy.”
Rosen told PBS that Republicans were “gutting our tourism industry by grinding air travel to a halt.”
That’s some spin.
Flights slowed down because the FAA had to furlough staff – something that happens every time there’s a shutdown.
The truth is, Democrats could’ve reopened the FAA weeks ago with a clean funding bill.
They didn’t, because party leaders wanted leverage for more Obamacare subsidies.
So while flights backed up at Harry Reid International and tourists started second-guessing trips to Vegas, Nevada’s senators were busy blaming everyone but themselves.
Excuse #3: “This was the only deal on the table.”
That’s not quite true.
There had been earlier Republican stopgap proposals and smaller funding measures – to reopen parts of the government like defense, veterans’ programs, and food aid – but Senate Democrats blocked them while pushing for an extension of ACA tax credits.
The “only option” magically appeared after public opinion polls started showing Americans fed up with the standoff.
When even Bernie Sanders calls your vote “a very, very bad decision,” you know the spin is wearing thin.
Excuse #4: “We stood up to Trump.”
Ah yes – the classic Democratic reset button.
Rosen and Cortez Masto both said the shutdown was caused by Trump’s “mass firings” and “weaponization of power.”
But those weren’t firings – they were furloughs required by law during a funding lapse. Every administration follows the same rule.
If the senators really wanted to “stand up for workers,” they could’ve voted to pay them three weeks earlier.
The Real Reason: Political Survival
PBS reported the crossovers, quoting Speaker Johnson’s praise. In Nevada, we call it damage control.
Both senators were watching the clock run out – not on the shutdown, but on their political goodwill.
Business owners, union workers, and even some Democrats were tired of the stunt.
Once the pressure got hot enough, Rosen and Cortez Masto jumped ship and tried to look noble doing it.
They Didn’t Lead — They Followed
Nevada didn’t need two senators waiting around for permission from Chuck Schumer to do the right thing.
If they really cared about working families and the state’s economy, they could’ve voted to reopen the government weeks earlier.
Instead, they let the shutdown drag on, blamed Trump, and then claimed victory once it was politically safe to flip.
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