During every presidential election, voters must ask themselves: Are we better off today than we were four years ago? For the nation’s nurses, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
As executive director of National Nurses United, the largest U.S. union of registered nurses—and as an RN myself—I remember all too well what nurses were facing in 2020 when Donald Trump was President. Four years ago this month, nurses across the U.S. were completely overwhelmed by the horrors of early COVID-19. Hospitals were overflowing with sick patients and people were dying at terrifying rates. Nurses were constantly at risk of illness and death because our employers failed to get us the personal protective equipment and implement the infection control procedures we needed to stay safe ourselves and to keep our patients and families safe.
I remember the gut-wrenching sadness and anger the day I got the call that our first NNU nurse member, Noel Sinkiat, had died of COVID-19. And that intense feeling of grief and fury only grew as NNU members like RN Celia Yap-Banago demanded PPE—and died without ever receiving it. For the rest of my life, I’ll never forget the voices of distraught nurses on the other end of the phone, scared they would succumb not just to COVID, but to inaction and indifference from the Trump administration.
The Trump administration failed to take action to prevent and respond to this catastrophe. Trump refused to listen to nurses. Or doctors. Or science. He repeatedly ignored the danger and ridiculed the established science on how to deal with communicable diseases.
In some cities, so many people were dying that hospitals had to set up portable morgues outside. The importance of public policy is crystalized when you’re the one zipping up the body bags.
Read More: One Month Inside a New York City Hospital as COVID Took Over the World
To borrow from recent campaign speeches delivered by Vice President Kamala Harris: we are not going back. That’s why National Nurses United is backing Harris for President. When it comes to choosing the next President, we know our country’s health is truly at stake.
The potential for a Harris administration couldn’t stand out in starker relief to what we experienced under Trump. During the peak of COVID-19, the day after President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris were sworn in, the administration issued an executive order to federal agencies to take swift action to protect the health and safety of workers during the pandemic. As Vice President, Harris got to work to ensure a comprehensive pandemic response program, including free COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccinations.
And she has consistently shown that she understands the importance of expanding health care for working people. She played a critical role in passing legislation that lowered the cost of insulin and other prescription drugs, and has constantly defended the Affordable Care Act and Medicare from Republican-led attacks. As a Senator, she co-sponsored nurse-backed legislation to protect our patients.
All of this matters, because the future of our nation’s health is not just about COVID. We remember well that Trump wanted to kill the ACA. On reproductive health care, the choice is also stark, as his appointment of three far-right Supreme Court justices led to Roe v. Wade being overturned. In contrast, Vice President Harris has fought to restore those protections. She has toured nationally in support of reproductive rights, called on Congress to restore the protections of Roe, and is the highest-level public official to ever visit a reproductive health clinic.
Nurses like myself know what our patients face in states with the harshest barriers to reproductive care: high rates of infant and maternal mortality, limited access to life-saving medications, medical complications, illness, and even death. Nurses in these states are hamstrung, trying to understand legal questions about the restrictions, unable to follow our sacred obligation to protect our patients.
We need a President who believes patients should have the freedom to make choices about their own bodies. Kamala Harris is that person.
Vice President Harris, who has played a critical role in the most pro-labor administration in modern history, will also protect our health by siding with workers—not bosses like Trump has. Unions like mine are a key patient protection since nurses can collectively speak up for safe patient care conditions only when we’re protected from hospital management retaliation by being part of a union. Harris helped lead the effort to save the pensions of more than 1 million union workers and retirees, stood in solidarity with striking union workers, and chaired the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. She has consistently supported NNU-backed legislation that protects the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Trump, on the other hand, spent his presidency gutting the collective bargaining rights of federal employees, allowing employers to more easily suspend or evade union contracts, and installing anti-union officials in key agencies. Worker health and safety got worse in the four years under Trump and would be at even more risk in a second term. He’s the candidate of the bosses.
Nurses in this country agree: going back is not an option for the health and wellbeing of our patients and communities. We’ll be voting for Kamala Harris this November, and we urge you to do the same.
Bonnie Castillo is an RN and the executive director of National Nurses United. She is a member of the 2020 TIME100.
- Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
- How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
- What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?
- How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
- Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
- How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
- What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
- The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024
