Nurses Don’t Have Proper Protection to Fight the Coronavirus. They’re Begging Trump to Help.

A dozen nurses, standing six feet apart outside the White House on Tuesday, called on the Trump administration and Congress to allocate proper personal protective equipment for health care workers who desperately need them.

The nurses, represented by the National Nurses United, demanded that Trump invoke the Defense Production Act to require the private sector to manufacture PPE, which is in such low supply across the country that many health care workers have had to reuse equipment or simply improvise their own.

“Nurses are raising our voices across the country, and we demand to be heard,” one nurse said. “President Trump, Congress, and all other government officials: We demand that you immediately give PPE to nurses, doctors, and health care workers on the front lines of this pandemic. If you don’t protect us, we can’t protect our patients.”

Another nurse read the names of 50 nurses who have died from COVID-19.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate