Lucy Picasso was in her element.

She was showing her paintings at the Outsider Art Fair, a high-profile international exhibition in New York City this February. Big-name curators, gallerists and critics were there; Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi and David Byrne reportedly stopped by. And Lucy Picasso was chatting away, giving out buttons with her artwork, selling original paintings and signing autographs.

Artist Scott Sorensen demonstrates painting one of his ceramic masks at Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul on Jan. 8, 2025. Sorensen was one of five local artists selected to show work at the high-profile Outsider Art Fair in New York City in March 2025. (Courtesy of Interact Center)

She and four other local artists were featured in the exhibition thanks to Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, a St. Paul program that serves artists with disabilities, including Lucy Picasso. Art by Scott Sorensen, Carl Clark, Janice Essick and Matt Zimdars was also shown at the fair.

(Lucy Picasso’s birth name, Louann Johnson, went out the window years ago in favor of tributes to comedian Lucille Ball and the Cubist master.)

Interact, founded in 1996, is a progressive art studio, part of a national movement of nonprofits dedicated to supporting artists with disabilities in building careers in the arts. Many staff members at the organization are both professional art instructors and disability support professionals, said Interact executive director Joseph Price. More broadly, the model aims to challenge perceptions of disability and the societal roles people with disabilities can hold.

“We believe that our artists are just as able and capable of creating great works of art as any professional, and we want to keep focused on the idea that our artistic standard is no different than any other professional artistic standard,” Price said.

Take Lucy Picasso herself, for instance. Today she is, by any metric, a successful full-time professional artist. Fifteen years ago, she was working in downtown Minneapolis, vacuuming carpets at a furniture store. It was not until she joined Interact that she discovered her artistic talent, her sister Debb Masterson said — and without Interact, she, like others with intellectual disabilities, might still find herself stuck doing rote jobs like stuffing envelopes or taking out garbage.

“I don’t want to do that, that’s boring!” Lucy Picasso said, sitting next to Masterson. “Or clean toilets, or wash floors, or put paper towels in the paper towel holder. Who wants to do that? There’s lots of artwork I would like to do. That’s my passion.”

“It’s really transformed her life,” Masterson added. “Without Interact, who knows what she’d be doing.”

For the Outsider Art Fair, Lucy Picasso, Sorenson, their families and Interact staff including Price were in New York for about a week. And they made time for tourist stops at the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and plenty of art museums, Lucy Picasso and Masterson said.

“I really loved New York,” Lucy Picasso said. “All the different museums and paintings really inspired me.”

Interact’s presence at this year’s Outsider Art Fair is the result of more than a decade of effort, Price said. The show is extremely competitive and the organization has applied many times previously, he said; for this year’s successful bid, Interact enlisted the help of guest curator and noted artist Lauren dela Roche.

Besides generating potentially transformative buzz about the artists themselves, Price said the experience reinforces Interact’s central message to both its roster of artists and the wider public: Creative, fulfilling careers in professional art are within reach for people with disabilities, too.

“Beyond the daily support that our folks need, they also deserve a life that is interesting and vital and where they get to call the shots,” Price said. “We belong, and our artists belong, in a national conversation — an international conversation — when it comes to art collection and galleries.”

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By Aneri Pattani, KFF Health News

When the Trump administration cut more than $11 billion in COVID-era funds to states in late March, addiction recovery programs suffered swift losses.

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An Indiana organization that employs people in recovery to help peers with substance use disorders and mental illness was forced to lay off three workers. A Texas digital support service for people with addiction and mental illness prepared to shutter its 24/7 call line within a week. A Minnesota program focused on addiction in the East African community curtailed its outreach to vulnerable people on the street.

Although the federal assistance was awarded during the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the funds supported activities related to infectious disease, a sizable chunk went to programs on mental health and addiction. The latter are both chronic concerns in the U.S. that were exacerbated during the pandemic and continue to affect millions of Americans. Colorado, for example, received more than $30 million for such programs and Minnesota received nearly $28 million, according to health and human services agencies in those states.

In many cases, this money flowed to addiction recovery services, which go beyond traditional treatment to help people with substance use disorders rebuild their lives. These programs do things that insurers often don’t reimburse, such as driving people to medical appointments and court hearings, crafting résumés and training them for new jobs, finding them housing, and helping them build social connections unrelated to drugs.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s cuts, allowing the programs to continue — for now — receiving federal funding. But many of the affected programs say they can’t easily rehire people they laid off or resurrect services they curtailed. And they’re unsure they can survive long-term amid an environment of uncertainty and fear, not knowing when the judge’s ruling might be lifted or another funding source cut.

The week it slashed the funding, the Trump administration also announced a massive reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the consolidation of the main federal agency focused on addiction recovery services. Without a stand-alone office like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, many advocates worry, recovery work — and the funding to support it — will no longer be a priority. Although private foundations and state governments may step in, it’s unlikely they could match the tranches of federal funding.

“Recovery support is treated as optional,” said Racquel Garcia, founder of HardBeauty, a Colorado-based addiction recovery organization.

The federal cuts put at risk a roughly $75,000 grant her team had received to care for pregnant women with substance use disorders in two rural counties in Colorado.

“It’s very easy to make sweeping decisions from the top in the name of money, when you don’t have to be the one to tell the mom, ‘We can’t show up today,’” Garcia said. “When you never have to sit in front of the mama who really needed us to be there.”

Mental health conditions, including substance use disorders, are a leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S. And although national overdose deaths have decreased recently, rates have risen in many Black and Native American communities. Many people in the addiction field worry these funding rollbacks could reverse hard-earned progress.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard told KFF Health News that the department is reorganizing to improve efficiency, foster a more coordinated approach to addiction, and prioritize funding projects that align with the president’s Make America Healthy Again initiative.

“We aim to streamline resources and eliminate redundancies, ensuring that essential mental health and substance use disorder services are delivered more effectively,” she said in a statement.

But to Garcia, it doesn’t feel like streamlining. It feels like abandoning moms in need.

Between the time the cuts were announced and when the federal judge paused them, two women served by Garcia’s program gave birth, she said. Though her grant funding was in limbo, Garcia told her employee to show up at the bedside for both moms. The employee followed up with daily check-ins for the new moms, connected them to treatment or housing services when needed, and helped them navigate the child services system.

“I just can’t leave moms” without services, Garcia said. “I just can’t do it.”

Nor can she abandon that employee, she said. Although the federal funding provided half of that employee’s salary, Garcia has continued to keep her on full time.

Garcia said she primarily employs women in recovery, many of whom spent years trapped in abusive situations, relying on welfare benefits. Now they’re sober and have found meaningful work that allows them to provide for their families, she said. “We created our own workforce of mamas who help other mamas.”

This type of recovery workforce development seems to align with the Republican Party’s goals of getting more people to work and reducing reliance on welfare benefits. The Trump administration’s drug policy priorities, released in early April, identified creating “a skilled, recovery-ready workforce” and strengthening peer recovery support services as crucial efforts to help people “find recovery and lead productive, healthy lives.” Many recovery programs train people for blue-collar jobs, which could support Trump’s goal of reviving the manufacturing industry.

But the administration’s actions appear to conflict with its stated goals, said Rahul Gupta, the nation’s drug czar during the Biden administration.

“You can’t have manufacturing if people can’t pass a urine drug test or continue to suffer from addiction or relapse,” said Gupta, who is now president of GATC Health, a company using artificial intelligence for drug development.

Even if jobs return to rural America, cutting funding for recovery services and the main federal office overseeing such efforts could mean fewer people are employable, Gupta said.

Research on recovery programs, particularly those run by people with personal addiction experience, suggests they can increase engagement in court-ordered treatment, reduce the prevalence of rearrest, bolster attendance at treatment appointments, and improve the likelihood of families reunifying and stabilizing.

Billy O’Bryan sees these benefits daily. As a state director for the national nonprofit Young People in Recovery, O’Bryan oversees about a dozen chapters in Kentucky that teach people in recovery life skills, such as balancing a checkbook and interviewing for jobs, and show them how to have fun in sobriety, through group hikes and glow-in-the-dark Ultimate Frisbee games.

Providing recovery services “is when we really invest in their future,” said O’Bryan, who is in recovery too.

Six of his chapters were affected by the federal funding cuts. That has meant dipping into his organization’s rainy day fund to pay staff and cutting back on community events, including cleanup days in which chapter members gather used syringes off the street, pass out the overdose reversal medication naloxone, and talk to people using drugs about the possibility of recovery.

He’s exploring fundraising efforts now, but not all his chapters have the same ability.

“In a city like Louisville, fundraising is not a problem,” O’Bryan said, “but when you get out into Grayson, Kentucky” — a rural area in the Appalachian Mountains — “there’s not a lot of opportunities.”

In Minnesota, Kaleab Woldegiorgis and his colleagues at Niyyah Recovery Initiative used to spend hours a day at soup kitchens, community events, mosques, and on the streets of East African and Muslim neighborhoods, trying to connect with people using drugs. They spoke Somali, Amharic, and Swahili, among other languages.

Those outreach efforts allowed them to “find individuals in need of recovery services” who “weren’t seeking it out themselves,” said Woldegiorgis, who previously attended Niyyah’s support groups when he was dealing with addiction.

After building relationships with people, Woldegiorgis could help them connect with formal recovery services that bill their insurance, he said. But help couldn’t always wait for a contract.

One afternoon shortly before the federal funding cuts, Woldegiorgis and his colleagues spoke with a man who began weeping, recounting how he had wanted to get treatment a few days earlier but had lost his belongings, returned to using drugs, and ended up on the street. Woldegiorgis said he helped the man reconnect with a sister and begin exploring treatment options.

With the federal funding cuts, Niyyah may no longer be able to support this type of outreach work. Woldegiorgis fears it means people won’t receive the message of hope that can come from interacting with role models in recovery.

“People don’t pick up pamphlets to receive these messages. And people don’t read emails and people don’t look at billboards and find inspiration,” he said. “People need people.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

When I joined protests against the looming Iraq invasion in 2002, my American friends thought I was being exceptionally brave because I was only here on a student visa. I laughed. I also laughed when my fellow protesters angrily chanted, “This is what a police state looks like!” at the police cars idling across the street while officers ambled around.

You have no idea what an actual police state looks like, I told my friends. In my home country, Turkey, thousands were disappeared in the two decades following the 1980 military coup.

This word does not fit the English language. Disappeared? As a transitive verb? It’s part of a language of terror familiar to many around the world. “Desaparecidos,” in Spanish. In Turkey, the distraught relatives of “kaybedilenler” hold vigils on Saturdays. In Argentina, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo on Thursdays. In Sri Lanka. Bangladesh. Chile. Belarus. Egypt. Myanmar. El Salvador. Long list.

When I told my friends back in Turkey about the things Americans did and said, they guffawed, assuming I was making the whole thing up. Come on, tell us what’s actually happening. The police just sitting back and allowing people to organize protests and publish fiery op-eds? To people in Turkey, it was inconceivable. When I stuck to my story, they accused me, only half in jest, of being a paid propagandist for the CIA.

But I had been converted. A true believer. I had become free speech-pilled, as the kids say, after 9/11 as I watched in astonishment how many spoke out, not just in dissent but sometimes in shocking, incendiary sentiments. It didn’t always make them popular, but they didn’t face government retribution at the magnitude I was bracing for.

I knew the government violated some civil rights, of course, especially when it came to Arab Americans and occasionally protesters. A 2002 report said hundreds were targeted on the pretext of visa violations. As a Middle Easterner, I expected governments to break rules and violate rights, but this wasn’t at the scale or of the nature that would effectively terrorize dissenters into silence. That’s the logic behind those that do the disappearing: the impunity, the uncertainty, the endless agony. The terror that descends like a suffocating layer of tar on everyone.

But America was different. The odds were hugely in one’s favor against government retribution for speech or protest. The First Amendment wasn’t just for show. Americans meant it. I kept protesting. We lost. The war happened. I graduated.

Now, little more than two decades later, Americans are beginning to understand that disappeared can refer to an act of force. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts graduate student from Turkey here on a visa, believed in the American ideal of free speech, signing an opinion article in a student newspaper in support of a resolution passed by her university’s student government.

Then, about a year later there’s a video. She is walking down the street, chatting on her phone with her mom on her way to break her Ramadan fast. Twelve hours of hunger and thirst. Sixty-four days of the new administration.

There on the street, a group of people suddenly surround her. No uniforms. Hoodies and masks. One of them snatches her phone. She screams. She says she wants to call the police. She still believes they couldn’t be the police. Not in the United States. They grab her. We’d learn that for a long time, she thought they were kidnappers about to kill her. Her lawyer and her family couldn’t find her till much later.

The video ends right as they stuff her into an unmarked black SUV, and disappear her.

Zeynep Tufekci writes a column for the New York Times.

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It’s the time of year the most opinionated music fans around look forward to, the announcement of the 2025 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

From the very start nearly four decades ago, Rock Hall organizers have made it clear their definition of “rock and roll” is wide open to interpretation and that the genre was largely built by Black performers. Any combination of factors — chart success, innovation, influence, staying power — are considered for inclusion, which only fuels conversations about who does and does not belong.

And, well, I have opinions to share myself! Here’s my take on the seven inductees in the main category. (Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon are among others who will be inducted into side categories.) I’ve ranked them from least- to most-deserving of one of music’s highest honors.

7. Chubby Checker

While it’s not something I personally endorse, it’s not unheard of for Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to have the stray novelty song in their repertoire. Some examples: Chuck Berry (“My Ding-a-Ling”), Todd Rundgren (“Bang the Drum All Day”), R.E.M. (“Shiny Happy People”), Billy Joel (“We Didn’t Start the Fire”) and the Beatles (most Ringo songs).

As for the man born Ernest Evans, he built his entire career on novelty songs, only one of which — “The Twist” — is remembered (barely by many) today. Checker did actually score a few more hits, including 1961’s “Pony Time,” but “The Twist” was so massive, he couldn’t help but return to it for an increasingly embarrassing string of singles that include “Let’s Twist Again,” “Twistin’ U.S.A.,” “Slow Twistin’,” “La Paloma Twist” and “Teach Me to Twist.”

It’s also not unheard of for artists to, at least initially, dismiss the very notion of the Rock Hall, from Axl Rose to Dolly Parton to Ozzy Osbourne. Chubby Checker, meanwhile, practically begged to get in. He protested outside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2004 over the lack of airplay for “The Twist” (which was released in 1960!) and his perception that the Hall of Fame had snubbed him.

Chubby Checker may well be talented, but in no way does he deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If organizers are thirsty to get some novelty songs represented, they’d be much better off honoring Weird Al Yankovic, who has been doing this stuff for decades.

6. Bad Company

The Rock Hall is notorious in its love of boomer rock, stooping as low as inducting Foreigner and Peter Frampton last year. I guess they can go even lower, as Bad Company is the very definition of dull, middle of the road rock that now exists only on dusty classic rock stations (but not KQRS anymore) and in commercials that have nothing to do with the song. (In 2014, a Craftsman tools ad used “Feel Like Makin’ Love”!)

My guess is that this choice is really meant to honor lead singer Paul Rodgers, a journeyman vocalist who also led Free, the Firm and the Law and spent a brief, ill-advised time touring with Queen. If that’s the case, they should have just went ahead and inducted Rodgers as a solo act.

5. Joe Cocker

To be honest, the ranks for the next few acts could easily be interchangeable. They’re all deserving for various reasons and should already be in the Rock Hall.

Singer Joe “With a Little Help from my Friends” Cocker was the first musician to play at what would become First Avenue. (Valery Hache / Getty Images)

British vocalist Joe Cocker is best known for his bluesy wail and knack for picking songs to cover. After Cocker’s 2014 death, Paul McCartney praised him for his take on “With a Little Help from My Friends”: “It was just mind-blowing (and it) totally turned the song into a soul anthem and I was forever grateful to him for doing that … He was a great guy, a lovely guy who brought so much to the world and we’ll all miss him.”

Local music fans will always have a place for Cocker in their hearts, if only because he was the first act to play what would become First Avenue way back in 1970.

4. Soundgarden

While they never quite reached the artistic peaks of peers like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden was one of the first grunge bands to sign to a major label, A&M Records. (The label had signed locals the Suburbs a few years prior and Trip Shakespeare around the same time as Soundgarden.)

In this Feb. 13, 2013 photo, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden performs during the band’s concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. (Chris Pizzello / Invision / Associated Press)

Chris Cornell was often praised for his strength as a true rock and roll singer. Unfortunately, he joined a club that includes Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence and Chester Bennington when he took his own life in 2017.

3. Cyndi Lauper

Brooklyn native Cyndi Lauper was a perfect fit for the early days ’80s, when MTV and music videos ushered in a new series of stars.

She filled her 1983 debut album “She’s So Unusual” with bangers, from her signature hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” to a savvy Prince cover (“When You Were Mine”) to a No. 3 smash about masturbation (“She Bop”).

Thanks to her kooky outfits and kookier personality, it felt like she may be a one-and-done at the time. But she returned to the charts with the likes of “True Colors,” “Change of Heart” and “I Drove All Night.” When the hits dried up, Lauper continued to record and explore any number of genres, including alt rock, jazz, blues and electronic dance music. Her farewell tour hit Target Center in December.

Lauper also found tremendous success on Broadway with her Tony-winning score for the 2013 musical “Kinky Boots.” Her long-in-the-works musical based on the film “Working Girl” is set to debut in San Diego later this year before moving to Broadway in 2026.

With her Tony, pair of Grammys (best new artist and best musical theater album for “Kinky Boots”) and Emmy (for a guest role on “Mad About You”), Lauper is a mere Oscar away from becoming an EGOT. It’s entirely possible one is within her reach, as plans are underway to adapt the “Kinky Boots” musical into a film. This woman should’ve been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame years ago.

2. Outkast

Like Lauper, Atlanta hip hop duo Outkast’s entry into the Rock Hall is long overdue.

Starting with 1994’s “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik,” Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and André 3000 (André Benjamin) released a series of wildly influential and utterly entertaining albums to ever-increasing audiences. The pair peaked in a massive way with 2003’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” a sprawling, two-hour masterpiece that has been certified platinum 13 times and won two Grammys, including album of the year. It also featured a song called “Hey Ya” that you might have heard.

Outkast’s follow-up, 2006’s “Idlewild,” didn’t enjoy the same success, but much to their credit, Big Boi and André 3000 chose to quit while they were still ahead, leaving one of the strongest legacies in hip hop.

1. The White Stripes

I end with another duo that set the world on fire and did not overstay their welcome.

The White Stripes emerged from Detroit in 1999 with a startlingly minimalist take on the blues that stripped the genre down to just noisy guitar and manic vocals from Jack White and primal drumming from Meg White.

Their first two albums quickly established them in indie rock circles and the rest of the world soon followed thanks to the likes of “Fell in Love with a Girl,” “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” and “Seven Nation Army.”

During their reign, it drove me crazy hearing guys — and it was always guys — lament that the White Stripes would be so much better if they added a bass player and hired a “better” drummer. As White’s bumpy post-Stripes solo career has proven, the best work of his career was in the White Stripes and Meg White not only brought out the best in him, her drum work was absolutely essential to the duo’s sound.

Given that she was notoriously shy while in the White Stripes and that she has completely disappeared in the years since, it seems unlikely that Meg White will agree to perform at the induction ceremony. I’ll leave it to Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene for the final word: “Let’s hope that Meg at least watches the Disney+ livestream and smiles when the White Stripes are inducted. Great moments don’t always need to play out in public. And Meg White doesn’t owe us anything.”

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