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national nurses united
An Ebola Outbreak Made More Deadly and Dangerous Thanks to Trump
We lived through another pandemic nightmare with this president, but the warnings about what he was unleashing with his 2025 assault on USAID and CDC were not heeded. Once again, people are paying with their lives.
May 27, 2026
The current, rapidly metastasizing Ebola outbreak in East and Central Africa is a sobering reminder of how unprepared we remain for the inevitability of the next pandemic that is always sure to come. Especially when the US continues to hamstring the global efforts needed to contain deadly eruptions.
As of Sunday, May 24, there were 231 deaths and more than 1,000 cases reported, primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), though 10 African countries are now considered at risk. “You cannot cut the systems that detect and stop outbreaks early— then act shocked when they spiral. Pathogens exploit weak systems,” said Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA, in a post on Sunday.
On Monday, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the world that the outbreak was “outpacing us."
The Trump administration, previously the WHO's largest funder, is the biggest reason of these failures and need to play catch up. Assistance from the US to the DRC reportedly fell from $1.4 billion in 2024 to just $21 million in 2026, said Kuppalli.
“Many of the international systems created or strengthened after earlier Ebola crises have been weakened,” the Washington Post reported last week. While the US once "played a central coordinating role in previous Ebola response efforts,” the newspaper noted, "that infrastructure has been significantly diminished following Trump administration cuts" in early 2025.
With the US pulling out of the WHO and eviscerating the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which routed money and supplies quickly, the ability to help organizations on the ground pivot from prevention "to contact tracing and communications" has vanished, said Stephanie Psaki, US coordinator for global health security in the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has even barred key infectious disease officials from communicating with the WHO. “The whole disaster response capability at USAID no longer exists,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the former lead of USAID’s Ebola response team.
On May 20, National Nurses United, issued a statement admonishing the Trump administration for making everyone less safe in the face of the outbreak.
“Nurses understand the life-or-death importance of prevention, and when it comes to infectious diseases, that means having strong infrastructure in place to rapidly detect and respond to new outbreaks before they are out of control," said NNU. "The Trump administration has purposely taken a sledgehammer to that infrastructure over the past year.”
Nurses are prominent among the health workers, and health policy researchers, who have long warned of the danger of sudden outbreaks that can lead to massive, deadly pandemics.
“The arrival of the next great pandemic has always been a ‘when,’ not an ‘if,’ and firewalls for stopping it are getting thinner,” journalists Conn Hallinan and Carl Bloice wrote in 2005 in the California Nurses Association’s Revolution magazine. That piece was written amid concern for the spreading of avian flu, but the warning signs of a failing prevention and response system were already evident. “Public health budgets in this nation and across the globe are being systematically starved of funding,” they wrote.
Four years later, H1NI, also known as swine flu, brought the fears to life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated there were 60.8 million cases and an estimated range of between 151,700 to 575,400 deaths worldwide its first year alone. Deborah Burger, RN, then president of the California Nurses Association, warned, “We should learn the lessons of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, one of which was the enormous mitigating effect on mortality of adequate nursing care.”
Those working on the frontlines to care for infected patients are particularly vulnerable. Speaking to Hallinan and Bloice, University of Minnesota researcher Michael Osterholm predicted back in 2005 that “health care workers would become ill and die at rates similar to, or even higher than in the general public" in the face of a pandemic.
On July 17, 2009, Karen Ann Hays, a cancer care RN at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, CA near Sacramento, and a healthy triathlete and marathon runner, became the first health care worker in California to die of H1N1. Only after the union announced plans for a one-day strike affecting 16,000 RNs in California and Nevada, did then-Gov. Schwarzenegger and major hospitals implement new safety protocols.
In March 2014, the largest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus was reported in West Africa. By August, the WHO declared a public health emergency as it spread in Africa, and reached Europe and the US. As noted, the outbreak was particularly dangerous for healthcare workers exposed to Ebola patients.
Recalling the spread of H1N1, NNU urged federal, state, and local officials to adhere to strict infectious disease guidelines to protect patients, healthcare workers, and the public. Seeing little done by September 2014, more than 1,000 nurses held a march and die-in during a convention in Las Vegas to alert the public to inadequate US preparations to stop the spread of Ebola and similar pandemics.
Days later, a patient recently returned to the US from Liberia, was diagnosed with Ebola in a Dallas hospital and died. Within two weeks, two Dallas nurses in that hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vincent, were infected. NNU called on President Barack Obama to “invoke his executive authority” to order all US hospitals to meet the highest “uniform, national standards and protocols” to “safely protect patients, all healthcare workers and the public.”
Burger testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the lack of mandated protections for nurses and patients. “The risk of exposure to the population at large merely starts with front-line caregivers like registered nurses, physicians and other healthcare workers—it does not end there," Burger told lawmakers. "If we cannot protect our nurses and other healthcare workers, we cannot protect anyone.”
A two-day strike the next month at 86 hospitals and clinics over the lack of Ebola preparedness again helped spur needed measures. Within weeks, the federal government, and some states, including California, enacted reforms to improve pandemic protections in US facilities, and as NNU was also urging, escalated support for global protections in West Africa.
Cuba was in the forefront of providing direct frontline care in West Africa in 2014, sending 165 Cuban nurses and doctors, risking their own lives. At a time today with the US threatening an invasion of Cuba following months of an illegal blockade that has had a debilitating impact on its health care system, it’s worth recalling that as recently as 2024, Cuba had dispatched more than 20,000 medical staff to more than 50 countries in humanitarian missions.
When Trump first came into office, he ignored the preparedness lessons. Beginning the morning after his 2017 inauguration, Trump systematically dismantled a pandemic infrastructure response program put in place by Obama. By January 2020, when the WHO had begun warning of the outbreak known as Covid-19, the Trump administration was caught flatfooted. As the initial US infections appeared, Trump’s first public statement that month was this: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
In contrast, NNU had already begun to press Trump to implement national and safety protocols and measures, with public accountability. Instead, Trump’s response was months of denials, deflections, and promotion of false cures while dismissing the best protective measures. By June 2020, with 110,000 dead Americans, Trump insisted, “It is dying out, it’s going to fade away.”
By February 2024, the US counted nearly 7 million cases, and over 1.1 million deaths. So many lives could have been saved with advance preparedness and rapid implementation of the proper safety measures.
Hospital employers and numerous state governments, especially in GOP-controlled states, took their lead from the Trump administration to slow walk or ignore critical protections. Workers in essential front-line occupations, from public transportation to nursing homes and hospitals, as well as lower income jobs in grocery and drug stores, poultry and other meat processing, and service industries generally, paid a high price, especially workers of color.
Through August 2023, the Covid death count hit 5,753 for health care workers overall, including 501 RNs. Filipinos, 4 percent of all RNs, accounted for 21 percent of the deaths among nurses.
In the 2014 outbreak, 881 doctors, nurses, and midwives were infected in West Africa, and 513 died. The crisis created a severe shortage of healthcare workers across the region.
By May 21 in the current Ebola outbreak, at least four health worker deaths have been reported in the DRC. Three Red Cross volunteers have also died. One doctor evacuated from the DRC, waiting in a specialized hospital room in Prague to see whether he has Ebola, said his former colleagues in the DRC are beginning to die of the deadly disease.
The International Rescue Committee warned on Tuesady that thus outbreak is spreading faster than responders can contain it and risks becoming "the deadliest on record."
As the NNU warned last week, neither the nation nor the world can afford another public health mismanagement disaster from the like of Trump. “Nurses have already lived through one bungled, global health emergency response during the first Trump administration," said the union, "and we are appalled to know that when it comes to Ebola, hantavirus, or any other infectious disease, the United States under Donald Trump is now even less prepared than in 2020."Keep ReadingShow Less
'No Patient Deserves This': Doctors, Nurses Say Trump Blockade Is Killing Sick Cubans
"We do everything with love to assist people, but the reality right now is that we don’t have enough resources," said one Cuban doctor, who added that "the main cause of everything is the USA."
Mar 27, 2026
The Trump administration's oil blockade of Cuba—an escalation of the 65-year US stranglehold on the socialist island's economy—is killing Cubans amid a severe shortage of electricity and critical basic medical supplies, doctors and nurses there told reporters this week.
"I can’t tell you how many deaths, but I’m sure there are more than in the same period last year,” Dr. Alioth Fernandez, chief anesthesiologist at William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, told The New York Times in an article published Friday. “I see it in shift handovers, in colleagues’ comments, and in children I’ve operated on.”
Cuba's universal healthcare system is internationally known. Its "Army of White Coats" has been deployed around the world, both to provide routine and specialized care, as well as during emergencies such as the Haiti earthquake, Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak, and Covid-19 pandemic in Italy.
Despite decades of success under increasingly adverse conditions, Cuba's vaunted health system is under tremendous strain, due in no small part to the cumulative effects of generations of US economic sanctions.
"Since I was born, this is the most difficult time, without any doubt," José Carlos, a resident intern at Havana Cardiology Institute, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday. "We do everything with love to assist people, but the reality right now is that we don’t have enough resources."
The lack of fuel is limiting ambulance service and keeping many doctors and other medical professionals from commuting to hospitals that are canceling surgeries and discharging patients early. As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, more than 96,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—are waiting for surgery due to the fuel shortage.
"Everything is hitting us—energy, resources, transportation," Carlos told the CBC.
When the lights go out, neonatal nurses use hand-pumped ventilators to keep infants alive. Without power, hospitals and clinics can't administer chemotherapy cycles or dialysis treatments.
“I don’t know how long we can keep going,” Xenia Álvarez, the mother of a 21-year-old man who suffers a rare genetic disease and requires full-time use of a ventilator, told The New York Times.
Shortages of basic medicines and supplies are forcing doctors to substitute medications, delay treatments, or even ask patients' relatives to find supplies themselves. Antibiotics, painkillers, and medications to treat chronic diseases are scarce, as are gloves, syringes, and diagnostic equipment. Hospital staff also report difficulty maintaining sterile conditions.
While the US government claims that humanitarian goods like medicine are exempt from sanctions, critics counter that the fuel blockade, along with severe restrictions on banking and shipping, effectively block many medical supplies from reaching the island. The Trump administration has also been pressuring countries into expelling the lifesaving Cuban medical teams, sparking widespread outrage and condemnation.
After the Fidel Castro-led revolution that ousted the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the United States imposed an economic embargo on the island that has been perennially condemned by an overwhelming majority of United Nations member states for 33 years. Cuba says US sanctions have cost its economy more than $200 billion in inflation-adjusted losses.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently admitted that the economic chokehold is meant to force political change in Cuba while simultaneously disparaging the Cuban economy as "dysfunctional."
Rubio also said that although President Donald Trump is currently focused on the US-Israeli war of choice on Iran—one of seven nations attacked since the self-proclaimed "president of peace" returned to the White House—he would "be doing something with Cuba very soon."
Trump said earlier this month that he believes he'll "be having the honor of taking Cuba," language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain.
In addition to patients, the crisis in Cuba is also taking a physical and psychological toll on Cuban doctors—who, even with a recent raise earn just 100 pesos, or about $2.40, per 12-hour shift. This, in a country in which a dozen eggs cost nearly $10. Many doctors rely upon side hustles to get by.
"Doctors' pay is just for basic things," said Carlos. "It doesn’t allow you to buy many things in the supermarket or go to a restaurant or a hotel, or things like that."
Breakdowns and burnout are on the rise.
"I've seen doctors cry," one physician, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Reuters. "With this crisis, they cry. They've stopped working, they've become depressed. You can see it on their faces."
Despite the worsening situation, Carlos told the CBC that he does not want to leave Cuba, and blamed the US for the crisis.
"The main cause of everything is the USA," he said. "I have no doubt about that."
Some do want to leave, blaming their own government as well the US embargo for Cuba's suffering. Others are taking things one day at a time.
"We don’t know what will happen," a nurse who gave only her first name, Rita, told the CBC, "so we just keep working."
The mounting—and preventable—deaths in Cuba are prompting renewed calls for the US to lift sanctions on Cuba.
"No patient deserves this. Trump's cruel Cuban blockade is killing people unnecessarily," National Nurses United, the largest US nurses' union, said on social media Friday. "Depriving Cubans of essential resources needed to sustain life and health is an unconscionable violation of human rights. Nurses say: End the blockade now!"
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) also weighed in during a Thursday floor speech in which she said that "Cuba poses no threat to us, yet we are strangling an entire nation with economic warfare."
Trump's oil blockade is strangling an entire nation.
Families are going without food. Water systems are failing. Hospitals are struggling to stay open. This is economic warfare.
I'm calling for an immediate end to this cruel and indefensible blockade. Hands off Cuba. pic.twitter.com/MNybPNlBHn
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 26, 2026
"Families are going without food. Water systems are failing. Hospitals are struggling to stay open," she continued. "These tactics are designed to suffocate an island into submission. Make no mistake: This unconscionable suffering is occurring because Trump is trying to force regime change."
"Hands off Cuba," Omar added. "End the blockade now."
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‘Pretti’s Death Will Not Be in Vain’: Nurses Plan Nationwide Week of Action Against ICE Terror
"ICE messed with the wrong profession. We nurses will fight to abolish ICE and bring about a vision for a healthy society based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community."
Jan 27, 2026
The largest union of nurses in the United States is holding protests across the country this week to protest the killing of one of their own, Alex Pretti, by federal officers in Minneapolis and to demand the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents are terrorizing communities nationwide.
Demonstrations organized by National Nurses United (NNU) have been planned in more than a dozen states—from California to Florida to New York—as grassroots backlash against the Trump administration's lawless mass deportation efforts, detentions, and violent crackdowns on dissent continue to mount.
"Pretti's death will not be in vain. ICE messed with the wrong profession," NNU said in a statement. "We nurses will fight to abolish ICE and bring about a vision for a healthy society based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community."
NNU, which represents more than 225,000 nurses in the US, said in the hours after Pretti's killing that federal agents "have executed one of our fellow nurses, Alex Pretti, who saved veterans’ lives as an intensive care unit RN for the Veterans Health Administration."
"He not only advocated for his patients inside the VA as a member of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), but also took his advocacy to the streets to stand up for his community as nurses do," the union said. "We demand justice and accountability for his murder."
While demanding ICE's elimination as a federal agency, the nurses' union is also pushing senators to oppose any government funding legislation that includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE.
"Call your senators and tell them to oppose any appropriations package that includes the Homeland Security Appropriations bill," NNU wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. "Congress must not give a penny to ICE. Our taxpayer dollars must not be used to murder and terrorize our communities!"
URGENT: Call your senators and tell them to oppose any appropriations package that includes the Homeland Security Appropriations bill.
Congress must not give a penny to ICE. Our taxpayer dollars must not be used to murder and terrorize our communities!
☎️ 202-998-6094 ☎️ pic.twitter.com/h3i7iMvZPD
— National Nurses United (@NationalNurses) January 27, 2026
Ahead of a possible government shutdown at the end of the week, the US Senate is set to consider a legislative package that includes six appropriations bills, including a $64.4 billion DHS funding bill that contains $10 billion for ICE. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said Democrats won't provide the votes Republicans need to advance the appropriations package if the DHS bill is included.
Members of the Senate Democratic caucus are demanding that the DHS funding be stripped from the broader appropriations package and considered on its own, along with concrete reforms to ICE.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a close ally of union nurses, put forward a series of demands on Monday, including repeal of the $75 billion ICE funding that Republicans and President Donald Trump approved last summer, unmasking of ICE agents, and immediate removal of federal immigration agents from Minnesota and Maine.
"ICE is out of control, ignoring the law and our Constitution,” said Sanders. “Congress must vote NO on any additional funding for DHS."
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