National Nurses United

NATIONAL NURSE,™ (USPS publication permit number 0807-560/ISSN 2153- 0386 print/ISSN 2153-0394 online) The Voice of National Nurses United, October-November-December 2025 (Vol- ume 121/4) is published by National Nurses United, 155 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. It provides news of or - ganizational activities and reports on developments of concern to all registered nurses across the nation. It also carries gen- eral coverage and commen tary on matters of nursing practice, community and public health, and health care policy. It is pub- lished quarterly, with combined issues in January-February-March (winter), April- May-June (spring), July-August- September (summer), and October- November-December (fall). Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, California. POSTMASTER: send address changes to National Nurse, ™ 155 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA 94612-2908. To send a media release or announce- ment, fax (510) 663-0629. National Nurse™ is carried on the NNU website at www.nationalnursesunited.org. For permission to reprint articles, write to Editorial Office. To subscribe, send $40 ($45 foreign) to Subscription Department. Please contact us with your story ideas They can be about practice or manage- ment trends you've observed, or simply something new you've encountered in the profession. They can be about one nurse, unit, or hospital, or about the wider landscape of health care policy from an RN's perspective. They can be humorous, or a matter of life and death. If you're a writer and would like to contribute an article, please let us know. You can reach us at nationalnurse@nationalnursesunited.org EXECUTIVE EDITOR Puneet Maharaj EDITOR Lucia Hwang GRAPHIC DESIGN Jonathan Wieder COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR Sarah Cecile CONTRIBUTORS Rachel Berger, Lauren Bloomquist, Lucy Diavolo, Kari Jones, Dawn Kettinger, Michelle Morris, Chuleenan Svetvilas, Martha Wallner PHOTOGRAPHY Omar Bantayan, Jaclyn Higgs, Tad Keyes, Choppy Oshiro well, 2025 has been a year that will go down in infamy. We think it's safe to say that none of us have ever encountered, at least in our adult lifetimes, a federal government that is as fas- cist, as authoritarian, as corrupt, as cruel, and as bereft of morals than this second administration of Donald J. Trump. From day one, Trump attacked some of our most vulner- able patients: immigrants and trans patients, by no longer maintaining health care settings, churches, and schools as spaces safe from immigration enforcement, and by denying the existence and human rights of trans people. Everything quickly snowballed, from shutting down USAID to strip- ping our VA nurse members of their union rights, to passing a law that robs Medicaid and other social programs of $1 trillion just to fund tax cuts to billionaires and corpo- rations, to withholding SNAP food benefits during the government shutdown, to militarizing our National Guard and kidnapping Black and Brown citizens and noncitizens alike off U.S. city streets, to decimating our public health infrastructure by slashing the staffs of all of our federal health agencies. We could go on and there's way more, but he has done too much damage to cover here in its entirety. As nurses, we know that so many of the policies and agen- cies this administration is attacking are meant to improve public health and better the social determinants of health for our patients. But that is exactly the type of viewpoint that Trump's U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. rejects. Under the worldview of RFK, Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that he now leads, a person's health depends solely on personal choices about diet, exercise, and lifestyle. In this issue of the magazine, we explore this ideology and whom it serves. Spoiler alert: corporate profits are involved! Despite all these obstacles and challenges, union nurses continue caring and fighting on. During these dark times, there are still plenty of bright spots and good news to share. We are overjoyed to welcome St. Joseph Health nurses in Texas, who just unionized in December, into our union family. Nurses all over the country showed their strength through that most pow- erful of tools: striking. And members won amazing contracts to better conditions for their patients and themselves. As 2025 draws to a close, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you do for your patients, your cowork- ers, workplaces, and communities. We know that often it's overwhelming. But—despite whatever the Trump govern- ment may say—there's a reason we are the most trusted profession in the whole country. Our patients know we care and will never stop advocating for them. So let's enter 2026, ready to rumble! See you soon in a new and better year. Jamie Brown, RN; Nancy Hagans, RN; Cathy Kennedy, RN; Mary Turner, RN National Nurses United Presidents Letter from the NNU presidents Stay connected FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/NationalNurses X: @NationalNurses FLICKR: www.flickr.com/nationalnursesunited VIMEO: www.vimeo.com/NationalNursesUnited DIGITAL MAGAZINE: NationalNurseMagazine.org

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