Local public media outlets are bracing for federal funding cuts that could lead to layoffs and a reduction in services.

On May 1, President Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service. The CPB is a private nonprofit that distributes federal funding — $535 million in fiscal year 2025 — to more than 1,400 locally owned public radio and television stations.

The White House said NPR and PBS “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

“We’re all waiting to see what actually happens,” said Minnesota Public Radio president Duchesne Drew Friday. “(CPB is) challenging (Trump’s) authority to tell them what to do, because they’re not part of the executive branch. They’re created by and funded by Congress.”

A spokesperson for Twin Cities PBS (TPT) declined an interview request, but released a statement saying the station is “closely monitoring current threats to federal funding. We remain committed to our mission to deliver trusted public affairs information, enriching children’s programming, lifesaving emergency alerts and local storytelling that reflects and connects our communities.”

Drew said that in addition to attempting to block the CPB, the Trump administration is asking Congress to cut already approved public media spending for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

“This is not about balancing the federal budget,” said NPR president and CEO Katherine Maher in a news release. “The appropriation for public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS, represents less than 0.0001% of the federal budget.” Paula Kerger, the head of PBS, said the executive order was blatantly unlawful.

MPR would lose $5 million, or about 6% of its budget, Drew said.

“That would be a direct impact on us,” he said. “Fiscal year 2026 begins Oct. 1. So it’s not tomorrow, but it’s not that far away, especially when you think about planning for the year ahead.”

MPR membership drive

Drew set a new goal of $1 million for MPR’s upcoming membership drive this week. The only time MPR has hit that figure in the past was during an extended, 14-day member drive during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.

“We’re going to have, we hope, our best week ever,” Drew said. “We’re going to try to raise more money than we’ve ever raised in a week. But the $500,000 which we’re hoping to get, or more, pales in comparison to $5 million we’re about to lose if this pushes through.”

Smaller public radio stations will be hit harder than MPR, Drew said, while adding that MPR does a lot of things.

“We run three separate stations. The news station is the second-largest newsroom in the state and has people beyond the Twin Cities,” he said. “We’re in six other communities outside the Twin Cities. So we have a lot of money, (but) we cover a lot of territory.”

“People say ‘oh, you’ll be fine, right?’ or that it’s no big deal. I think if I start closing bureaus in greater Minnesota, because the money’s not there, people will notice that and will regret that, right? So I don’t want to suggest that just because we’re bigger, that somebody else doesn’t matter or make a difference. We’re the only free statewide news organization in Minnesota, and so trying to preserve what we’ve built is really important to us.”

“As it relates to smaller stations, it’s a higher percentage of their revenue, and they have smaller footprints as well, right? So it cuts both ways,” Drew said.

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American Public Media, MPR’s parent company, also distributes content like “Marketplace,” the New York Times’ “The Daily” and BBC World Service nationally, Drew said: “So if you’re in Miami or Dallas or Albany and you hear the BBC on the radio, it’s because they have a contract with APM.”

TPT cuts

While Drew and other public media leaders wait to see what happens next, TPT has already started making cuts.

Earlier this month, TPT’s president Sylvia Strobel announced furloughs for employees who worked on the animated show “Skillsville,” which is designed to improve children’s executive functioning skills and teach them about possible careers.

A U.S. Department of Education grant funding the show wasn’t renewed, but Strobel said the station is exploring a possible appeal.

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens “The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York” on July 17, it will mark the first solo exhibition of Morrison’s work at the Met — seen by many as a milestone for both the artist and the state’s art history.

This will be the first time many will learn Morrison’s New York story.

“Everyone’s looking at it as a big Minnesota moment in New York,” says Brenda Child, the Northrop Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Child, who helped found the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts, wrote a piece for the exhibition about Morrison that will appear in The Met Bulletin, a journal for the museum.

George Morrison at the exhibition “Standing in the Northern Lights: George Morrison, a Retrospective,” at the Minnesota Museum of Art in St. Paul in 1990. (Photo by Tom Attridge)

The Minnesota Museum of American Art (also known as The M) in St. Paul is a major partner on the exhibition, sending two of Morrison’s sketchbooks and 11 works on paper to New York.

The Met curator is Patricia Marroquin Norby, who has a doctorate from the University of Minnesota and is on the board of The M. The St. Paul museum holds one of the largest collections of Morrison’s work in the world.

“The M is super excited to be partnering with The Met on this exciting exhibition really highlighting one of Minnesota’s most notable artists, George Morrison,” said Kate Beane, director of The M.

Beane explained that Morrison is “an amazing Ojibwe Modernist whose work is seen all over the world and whose work is also quite often visible throughout the Twin Cities.”

Morrison, a Grand Portage Anishinaabe artist, is considered one of the great Abstract Expressionists and Modernists.

He is perhaps most famous for his brightly abstracted works that meditated on the idea of the horizon, directly inspired by his time living on the shores of the “big lake,” or Gichigami/Lake Superior.

Many of these works will appear in the exhibition.

But the main thrust of the show will be Morrison’s time living in New York, how it shaped him and how he shaped the art world.

Morrison moved from Minnesota to New York City in the 1940s to study on a scholarship at the Art Students League. There, he made friends with fellow Modernist all-stars Willem de Kooning, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline.

He moved back to Minnesota with artist and former wife Hazel Belvo in 1970.

The Met says the exhibition “explores how Morrison’s aesthetic inspiration and future trajectory drew from his love of New York, which he called a ‘Magical City.’ ”

Child says in Minnesota, we tend to underestimate Morrison’s impact outside the state.

“It’s really essential that we acknowledge that George Morrison was at the center of the American Abstract Expressionist movement at mid-century and that he did spend this important part of his career in New York City,” she said.

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Beane agreed.

“It’s really, really important for people to understand not just the impact that other places have on Minnesota artists, but the impact that Minnesota artists have outward towards the rest of the country and the rest of the world,” she said. “He was a game changer. He was ahead of his time, and I think what he represents is incredibly important for the public at large to know and see in terms of thinking about Minnesota artists.”

The exhibition will run through May 31, 2026.

Royce Lewis was hitless in his first 13 at-bats of the season, but there was another number the Twins’ third baseman preferred to focus on after the Twins’ win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night.

“I keep it humble but we’re 5-0 since Royce has been here,” Lewis said. “I can only imagine what it’ll be like when I start turning the tides.”

A day later, he did.

Lewis collected two hits in Sunday’s 7-6 walk-off extra inning win over the San Francisco Giants. In the sixth inning with the bases loaded and no outs, Lewis lined a hit to center, bringing in a run and snapping an 0-for-36 skid that stretched back to Sept. 24 of last season.

“It was a great day,” he said. “I’m just building off great at-bats. Hit a ball 106 (miles per hour) straight into the ground. … Just hitting the ball hard, but they’re making plays. That’s baseball. And then I get the blooper later, so it kind of works itself out. I feel good at the plate.”

Lewis missed the team’s first 35 games with a hamstring strain, returning to the Twins on Tuesday. He got 23 at-bats while on a rehab assignment with the Triple-A Saints before he came back, but he’s still been feeling things out at the plate in the early part of his season.

“Timing is hard,” Lewis said. “I just had six weeks off, I come back in and am facing these dudes that have crazy 18 inches of movement one way, 30 the other way. 97 to 76 (miles per hour) — it’s a big time difference. It was great for me, man. I’ll definitely take advantage of those at-bats and keep moving forward.”

Lewis, Twins manger Rocco Baldelli said, looked “really good,” at the plate and he praised the third baseman’s adjustment-making pitch to pitch.

Now, a day later with two hits to his name, Lewis has a new number he’s focused on.

“I’ve been here what, six games?” Lewis asked. “And six Ws. … I can’t take the smile off my face.”

Correa off

Carlos Correa played in 39 of the Twins’ first 40 games and on Sunday, he got a needed day of rest. He’ll couple that with Monday’s off day to get an extended break.

“We got together with Carlos, had a conversation and decided it would be a good day to get him off his feet,” Baldelli said. “Playing good, you want to keep everybody rolling, keep everybody in there of course. But I think it was something that he needed and something that he’ll benefit from long term.”

Correa missed parts of each of the last two seasons with plantar fasciitis but he’s been moving well and after a tough start to the season, has started to pick it up, hitting .364 with a .891 OPS in his last six games.

Briefly

Michael Tonkin was diagnosed with biceps tendinitis after suffering a setback on his rehab assignment for a shoulder strain. “I’m not sure if he’s had it yet or about to have it, but we’re looking into him getting an injection and probably being down for a period of time before he ramps back up,” Baldelli said. … Simeon Woods Richardson is set to take the ball when the Twins travel to play the Baltimore Orioles in a series that will begin on Tuesday.

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By WILL WEISSERT and AMANDA SEITZ

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’ll sign an executive order on Monday that, if implemented, could bring down the costs of some medications — reviving a failed effort from his first term on an issue he’s talked up since even before becoming president.

The order Trump is promising will direct the Department of Health and Human Services to tie what Medicare pays for medications administrated in a doctor’s office to the lowest price paid by other countries.

“I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World,” the president posted Sunday on his social media site, pledging to sign the order on Monday morning at the White House.

“Our Country will finally be treated fairly, and our citizens Healthcare Costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before,” Trump added.

His proposal would likely only impact certain drugs covered by Medicare and given in an office — think infusions that treat cancer, and other injectables. But it could potentially bring significant savings to the government, although the “TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS” Trump boasted about in his post may be an exaggeration.

Medicare provides health insurance for roughly 70 million older Americans. Complaints about U.S. drug prices being notoriously high, even when compared with other large and wealthy countries, have long drawn the ire of both parties, but a lasting fix has never cleared Congress.

Under the planned order, the federal government would tie what it pays pharmaceutical companies for those drugs to the price paid by a group of other, economically advanced countries — the so-called “most favored nation” approach.

The proposal will face fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.

It was a rule that Trump tried to adopt during his first term, but could never get through. He signed a similar executive order in the final weeks of his presidency, but a court order later blocked the rule from going into effect under the Biden administration.

The pharmaceutical industry argued that Trump’s 2020 attempt would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S.. The industry has long argued that forcing lower prices will hurt profits, and ultimately affect innovation and its efforts to develop new medicines.

Only drugs on Medicare Part B — the insurance for doctor’s office visits — are likely to be covered under the plan. Medicare beneficiaries are responsible for picking up some of the costs to get those medications during doctor’s visits, and for traditional Medicare enrollees there is no annual out-of-pocket cap on what they pay.

A report by the Trump administration during its first term found that the U.S. spends twice as much as some other countries in covering those drugs. Medicare Part B drug spending topped $33 billion in 2021.

More common prescription drugs filled at a pharmacy would probably not be covered by the new order.

Trump’s post formally previewing the action came after he teased a “very big announcement” last week. He gave no details, except to note that it wasn’t related to trade or the tariffs he has announced imposing on much of the world.

“We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make — like as big as it gets,” Trump said last week.

He came into his first term accusing pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” and complaining that other countries whose governments set drug prices were taking advantage of Americans.

On Sunday, Trump took aim at the industry again, writing that the “Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE.”

Referring to drug companies’ powerful lobbying efforts, he said that campaign contributions “can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican Party.”

“We are going to do the right thing,” he wrote.