When Harry Reid announced he would be retiring from the Senate in 2017, an alarm went up in Nevada over who would protect the state from outside attempts to exploit our public lands, harm our environment and turn us into a dumping ground for nuclear waste.
It was a legitimate concern. At that time, the rest of Nevada’s congressional delegation was thin on experience and clout, with nowhere near the level of influence Reid wielded as Senate majority leader from 2007-15 and minority leader his final two years in office.
But in the years since Reid’s departure, Southern Nevada’s delegates have carried forward Reid’s legacy as a state protector. Our region’s current leaders in Washington have proven adept at fending off the federal government’s attempts to subjugate us to all sorts of incursions.
They most recently rode to the rescue in shaping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), essentially the defense budget.
On the House side, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., authored an amendment that would block funding to resume nuclear bomb testing at the Nevada National Security Site — something the Trump administration has considered doing.
Rep. Steven Horsford, joined by Titus and their Democratic colleague Susie Lee, then spearheaded an amendment that would deny the U.S. Air Force from expanding its training range into more than 800,000 acres of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. That amendment beat back a recent measure by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, to allow the expansion, which would literally green-light bombing in the refuge.
The House, on a 295-125 vote, approved a version of the NDAA with both the amendment on nuclear testing and the protection of the refuge.
Meanwhile, Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen also worked on a Senate version of the NDAA that omitted expansion of not only the Nellis training range but also a similar proposal for Naval Air Station Fallon in Northern Nevada. The Senate passed that version of the bill by an 86-14 vote.
The votes in both chambers were great for Nevada.
While the state proudly supports the military, President Donald Trump’s mad fantasies about blowing up nuclear weapons here simply can’t be allowed to become reality. Nevadans were subjected to more than 900 bomb tests before an international test ban came about in the 1990s. Both ourselves and our downwind neighbors were exposed to radioactive fallout during the days of atmospheric tests, and below-ground testing brought its own set of environmental and health concerns.
Trump reportedly wants to resume testing to bring other nations to the negotiating table, but the move is instead likely to agitate those nations into conducting their own testing and ratchet up global nuclear tensions. And know this: There’s no scientific reason to do tests, because technological advancements allow weapons to be tested for efficiency without setting them off.
The training range expansions, meanwhile, would be harmful to the desert environment and to lands that are culturally and spiritually significant to Native American communities in Nevada. It also would reduce land used for outdoor recreation, and would in turn damage our emerging outdoor tourism industry. In a state hit particularly hard by the pandemic, it’s vital that we protect our opportunities to get outside for mental and physical well-being, and that we also remain an attractive destination for tourists who want to explore our natural areas.
By the way, it’s important to note that the Northern Nevada member of the state’s congressional delegation, Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican, is completely out of step — he voted against the House version of the NDAA.
But despite the efforts of Southern Nevada’s congressional delegates, the state still isn’t out of the woods. Trump, in a reflection of how much he disregards Nevada’s interests, is threatening to veto any version of the NDAA that bars the training range expansions. Disgustingly, he’s also threatening a veto to overturn bipartisan provisions approved in both chambers to remove the names of Confederate soldiers from military installations.
Now, as negotiators from both the House and Senate meet in conference committee to hammer out a final version of the NDAA, that veto threat will undoubtedly be on the minds of some. But let’s make this loud and clear: Nevadans overwhelmingly oppose the bombing range expansions, and we support the removal of Confederate names from installations just as strongly.
Nevada has stood up to Trump before and won. We overcame his efforts to resurrect the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility, which he finally abandoned this year when he included no funding for the project in his budget recommendations to Congress.
That was a significant win for Nevada, and a reflection of our leaders’ commitment to protecting our state’s people, its environment and our economy. To our senators and House members, we say keep up the good work.