Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544067
Community hospitals are lifelines. Just ask Evelyn Exevea, a veteran ICU nurse at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, Calif. After 20 years at her facility, she knows that without the services her hospital provides, countless lives would be at risk. There's no such thing as just driving to the next hospital when every second counts. "I'm so proud of my hospital for being a comprehensive stroke center," said Exevea, emphasizing that Glendale Memorial offers criti- cal, local care that can prevent patients in her community from experiencing rapid, irreversible neural loss. "If your brain doesn't get oxygen for even five minutes, that part is always going to be damaged." Despite the lifesaving services provided by Glendale Memorial and other community hospitals across the country, NNU research- ers have combed through five years of hospital financial data to identify more than 400 hospitals now at risk of service cuts, or even closure, due to the Trump administration and Republicans' 2025 budget bill, H.R. 1. This deadly bill slashed $1 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid — funding that hospitals rely on to stay functional, and patients rely on to stay alive — redirecting that money to bil- lionaire tax cuts and to heavily militarizing ICE. RNs were not going to stand by and let the billionaires throw working-class people under the bus. That's why union nurses launched the Red Alert: Save Our Hospitals tour, which will cross the country in 2026 and beyond, holding community events at the hospitals most vulnerable to cuts in care or closure. Nurses are advancing the people's narrative of what has gone wrong, and point- ing to concrete, commonsense policy solutions that will keep community hospitals open and allow all working people to thrive. The Red Alert tour launched in Glendale on Jan. 24 with a family- friendly event drawing attention to both Glendale Memorial and its vulnerable sister hospital, USC Verdugo Hills, both of which rely heavily on funding from Medicare and Medicaid to stay afloat. Against the backdrop of a big, red bus emblazoned with the words "Save our hospi- tals, protect our patients," community and labor allies, and elected officials stood in strong solidarity with nurses, calling for change. "Over the past year, we've seen federal agents kidnapping, injur- ing, and even killing immigrants and U.S. citizens," said California Nurses Association President Sandy Reding, RN, at the launch event. "At Glendale Memorial, nurses and patients had to protest ICE agents camping out in the lobby for two weeks this summer, trauma- 22 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y | M A R C H 2 0 2 6 DRIVEN Nurses launch Red Alert tour to save our hospitals, protect our most vulnerable patients from the Trump administration's cuts. By Kari Jones