The U.S. Department of Education has excluded nursing from its official definition of "professional degree" programs as part of student loan changes under a new bill. This reclassification, scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026, means graduate nursing students will have lower federal loan borrowing limits and could impact access to financial aid. Whoa, what? Advancing nursing degrees are not 'professional'? And, let's see if we get this right: this would make it harder - more expensive - to get an advanced nursing degree? Last we checked we already had a nursing shortage. Not to mention that the nursing workforce is aging and not being replaced by younger nurses, hence greater shortages. Oh, and did we mention the profession is almost 90% female? MaryAnn Vitiello, APRN, MSN, NP, nurse and nursing advocate, joins us today. You'll hear not only about the proposed bill, but also about who all these advanced practice nurses are (Nurse Anesthetists? Nurse Practitioners?,) how they came about, and what their growth has meant for health care in America. For anyone who might need health care - and isn't that everyone? - this is for you.

Resources: Full list of degrees not classed as ‘professional’ by Trump admin - Newsweek, Nursing Excluded as 'Professional' Degree By Department of Education | Nurse.Org

Gen Z - our youngest active generation, ages 13-28 - shows a gender divide unseen in any past generation. Polls and voting records in the US and around the globe reveal young men to be far more conservative than any other generation alive today, and young women to be more liberal. Six in ten Gen Z men say men are being asked to do too much to support equality and almost a third say that a man who stays home to care for his children is 'less of a man."

Moreover, many Gen Z men place marriage and children high on their list of life priorities - higher than women of any political persuasion. And our media habits only amplify these divisions - men and women hew toward different podcasts, social media, and books. What's going on here? And how will we come together?

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If you are one of the 1.3 million active duty military personnel in the US or one of the over 750,000 National Guard and Reserves called into active duty and you are sexually assaulted - or worse - you fall under a military justice system, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Your active commanding officers may well be determining your case. in 2024, there were 8195 reports of sexual assault in the miliary - affecting roughly equal numbers of men and women. In October 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled back whistle-blower protections for assault charges in the military. Why are we stepping back from reforms of the last 25 years? Can US military culture be made safer for service men and women? Join Nancy Parrish, Founder and Director of Protect Our Defenders (PoD), a national organization dedicated to ending sexual assault in the military, for a timely discussion of the military and it's policies surrounding sexual assault. (PoD provides pro bono legal assistance to affected individuals as well as advocacy on policy changes).

Resources:

• Veterans See Costs and Risks in Hegseth’s Military Rewind to 1990 - The New York Times
• Protect Our Defenders
• Hegseth’s Rollback of Whistleblower Protections Is Reckless and Dangerous to Mission Readiness
• SAPR.mil
• Lawmakers press for continued funds, staff to combat military sexual assault