"I'm trying my best to take care of your family members. I'm trying my best to take care of you...I'm being asked to reuse my personal protective equipment, that is one-time-use, over and over."

These chilling words from a nurse in Sacramento describe the dangerous circumstances many nurses fighting the coronavirus face right now. Too many nurses are forced to work without the equipment they desperately need to protect themselves and their patients from COVID-19.

That means the people -- mostly women who make up 80 percent of health care workers--on the frontlines of this crisis are going to work every day wondering when they'll contract the virus, when they'll pass it to a patient, or when they'll bring it home to their families.

Every day that health care workers must wait for protective equipment puts lives on the line. That's why we're joining forces with National Nurses United--the largest union of registered nurses in the United States--to demand that Donald Trump use his presidential powers to ramp up production of the protective equipment nurses need.Instead of doing his job to protect health care workers and patients, Trump is busy blaming hospitals and health care workers for the shortage in masks when in reality he has the authority to help fix the problem.

The Defense Production Act gives Trump the authority to direct U.S. manufacturers to mass-produce N95 face masks and other critical protective equipment for health care workers. But, so far, he has refused to do so, thanks to lobbying from big corporations.

Trump only recently used the Defense Production Act to order ventilators from General Motors needed for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but he hasn't done anything to increase production of personal protective equipment (PPE), like masks or gowns. Ordering more ventilators is a step in the right direction, but as one nurse recently put it, "Without this PPE [like face masks], we won't need the ventilators, because none of us will be around to run them."

Sign the petition to support nurses: Trump must use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production and rush supplies to nurses on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19.