Reading archive 2025-06-06

What really keeps mosquitoes away? Probably not your lavender plants.: A fact-based look at scented plants, essential oils and other mosquito repellents.

As Trump taunts Springsteen, these Republicans stick with The Boss: Trump is beefing with Bruce Springsteen. But some GOP figures are standing by the Jersey icon.

These publicly funded homes for the poor cost $1.2 million each to build: D.C. apartment buildings exemplify a national trend, as the costs of affordable housing approach and sometimes exceed $1 million per unit in cities that also include San Francisco and Chicago. - "Another tax-credit project in Southeast Washington, the Ethel, cost nearly $800,000 per unit, all 100 of which are one-bedrooms. Bowser has claimed it as a signature accomplishment. The architect touts the detailing of its facade and the developers are set to walk away with an $8.5-million fee, records show. 

"Next door, the same developers built the Park Kennedy, for mostly market-rate tenants, at a per-unit cost of about $350,000, records show."

Chinese propaganda surges as the U.S. defunds Radio Free Asia: Beijing expanded its state propaganda, including to the persecuted Tibetan and Uyghur minorities, as RFA pulled back.

Jake Tapper is the reason America is doomed SFGATE columnist Drew Magary is sick of the face of CNN using his platform to tell us about year-old news - "Tapper is less a journalist now than he is one of the many prominent media figures eager to profit off the Trump news industrial complex."

Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.