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NURSES ARE THE BEST OF US. TRUMP’S REPUBLICAN PARTY SHOULD TAKE
NOTES.  
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Abdul El-Sayed
December 16, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ The Trump administration has excluded nurses from a key loan
program designed to help those with professional degrees. This puts
all Americans seeking care at increased risk and further harms our
broken healthcare system. _

Southfield, Michigan, Nurses rally outside Corewell Health during
their fight for a union contract. Corewell is the largest healthcare
system in Michigan. Its 10,000 nurses voted to join the Teamsters in
late 2024 and are fighting for their first contract, Jim
West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

 

Apart from his “concepts of a plan,” it’s clear that Donald
Trump [[link removed]] doesn’t know
much about healthcare [[link removed]].
But there is one cardinal rule: don’t mess with nurses. After all,
these are the folks who keep our healthcare system alive. My mother
and grandmother are both nurses. They work brutal hours under nonstop
pressure, juggling complex cases, emotional trauma, and physical
exhaustion, while still showing up every day with the skill,
compassion, and steady judgment required. As someone who’s led two
of Michigan’s largest health departments, I know that if we want
stronger hospitals, better patient outcomes, and a reliable healthcare
workforce, we have to invest in our nurses and their education.

But Trump’s Department of Education decided to move us in exactly
the opposite direction. Under rules buried deep in his “Big
Beautiful Bill,” only certain graduate programs qualify as
“professional degrees” eligible for higher loan caps, up to
$50,000 a year or $200,000 total. And unbelievably, graduate nursing
programs were excluded from that list of programs.

Our federal government wants to make it harder for nurses to step into
the roles our healthcare system desperately needs to fill? Yes,
you’re reading that right. This not only is a slap in the face to
nurses everywhere, it leaves Americans with less options and safety in
the care we can receive. As a doctor, I know our system is nothing
without the care nurses provide. These continued attacks on Medicare
[[link removed]] and now on nurses from the
White House [[link removed]] are taking
our broken system to the brink of failure, straining our country’s
staffing crisis. This will hit rural hospitals hardest, where nurse
practitioners are already providing so much primary care to patients.

I can’t think of a career more worthy of a “professional”
designation than nursing, the most honest and trusted profession in
America. President Trump has messed with the wrong folks.

Your circumstances shouldn’t hold you back from being able to pursue
the kind of career and education you deserve. Federal student loans
are one of the most effective tools we have to recruit talented folks
into the nursing profession and make sure they can keep growing in
their careers. When nurses can afford to become NPs, midwives,
specialists, and educators, hospitals stay safely staffed and patients
get the care they deserve.

Here in Michigan, we’re facing a projected 19% shortage of nurses by
2037. It’s not hard to understand why. Across the state, nurses are
facing increasingly brutal working conditions as our healthcare
systems consolidate, and the CEOs at the top put profits over
patients. In the past few months, I’ve joined striking nurses in
Mount Clemens, Rochester, and Grand Blanc who are all calling for
safer staffing. And I can’t think of a career more worthy of a
“professional” designation than nursing, the most honest and
trusted profession
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in America. President Trump has messed with the wrong folks.

Without nurses, we are all worse off. We know you can’t strengthen
the healthcare workforce by choking off the pathway to advanced
training. And you cannot improve patient care while putting up new
barriers for the very people who provide it.

Make no mistake, this is straight from the Project 2025
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wanted to defund female-dominated professions (about 90 percent
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of nurses are women), come for working class
[[link removed]] Americans, and make
education and healthcare even less accessible.

These loans aren’t a luxury. They’re how working nurses, the
backbone of our hospitals, move into the advanced roles our health
system depends on. The cost of attendance for nurses pursuing graduate
degrees on average is over $30,000 per year, which exceeds the
proposed annual cap of $20,500 per year. Without accessible loans, we
lose future providers to burnout, stalled careers, and financial
barriers that shut out entire communities.

We need loan programs that open doors, not close them.

===

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running for US Senate in Michigan. He ran two of
the state’s largest health departments and wrote the book, MEDICARE
FOR ALL: A CITIZEN'S GUIDE
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* Nurses; Health Care; Medicare for All;
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