Cursor line is not highlighted

[alexsmartens]

Problem: the line with the cursors is not highlighted.
Expectation:

My initial thought was that the highlight color is the same as the background color, but I tried different themes and it doesn't seem to help. I also added these lines to my config but it doesn't seem to help either:

let g:NERDTreeHighlightCursorline = 1
let g:NERDTreeHighlightFolders = 1 

Please advice how to configure this