For many years, various shades of white and beige dominated the home trend market, but now, gradually, color is coming back in a big way. And there are several colors that could make you more money when it comes time to sell your house, plus others that could cost you. According to Zillow’s 2026 Paint Color Analysis, the interior paint color choice that saw the biggest return was chocolate brown in a bedroom. The report found that bedroom walls in this hue could add an estimated $2,277 to a home’s offer price. Maybe it has something to do with the dark, moody hue. But brown was not the only color making home sellers some extra cash. While white walls are seen as a blank slate, sometimes potential buyers need a little assistance envisioning themselves living in a space. It was also discovered that pale blue living room walls could add about $1,723 to an offer price. That was more than white or gray walls, which were both calculated to add around $1,509. Charcoal gray kitchens were found to boost a home’s offer price by nearly $1,373. Overall, sage green was one of the safest color options for any room, including the bathroom. “Greens continue to be seen as a modern neutral; sage is calming and nature-inspired bringing that dose of versatility to the bedroom without feeling plain,” Emily Kantz, Color Marketing Manager & Trendsight Team member at Sherwin-Williams, told Zillow.  She said it’s all part of a trend to embrace color in favor of neutrality. “Giving your home some personality by using a color that has depth is driving measurable return on investment,” Kantz added. “I’ve been seeing that a lot lately when it comes to design — playing it safe is riskier than experimenting with color and design.” There were also plenty of paint colors that could cost money when it came to getting offers. Ochre yellow was found to be one of the worst financial choices. Bold red bathrooms reportedly attracted offers that were $7,971 lower than if the room were white — the largest impact the study found for a single-room color choice, according to the report.” Blush pink bathrooms were a close second and resulted in offers that were $6,013 less. The experts recommend painting your home whatever color you want while living there, then repainting it when it’s time to list to maximize profits.  “If an ochre yellow kitchen brings you joy, embrace it!” Zillow’s home trends expert Amanda Pendleton said. “There will be some buyers who will love your yellow kitchen as much as you do. But getting top dollar for your home is all about appealing to the most potential buyers. So enjoy your ochre kitchen and when it’s time to sell, paint it charcoal gray or plum.”

As congressional Republicans reportedly debate the diminishing likelihood of a third budget reconciliation package, they should focus on the fact that such legislation could offer them a historic opportunity to rectify a decades-old injustice in the federal tax code that costs Americans billions of dollars every year. If they act, they will demonstrate their genuine commitment to reducing the cost of living. In doing so, they will greatly improve their chances of retaining control of Congress in the midterm elections. The federal income tax that we know and love today became law in October 1913, following ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Initially, the economic impact of the tax was quite limited. As a result of a low flat rate of just 1%, and numerous exemptions, only about 2% of households were covered. Those subject to the new tax paid all they owed at once on April 15 each year. Years later, with the onset of World War II, the federal income tax changed radically as the government’s need for revenue soared. Congress passed legislation to significantly increase tax rates and greatly expand the number of individuals subject to the tax. The Roosevelt administration was concerned that increased tax burdens could produce political blowback that might undermine the war effort. The administration was also concerned that many taxpayers might not be able to make the large annual lump sum payments needed on April 15 to comply with their increased obligations. And even if taxpayers complied, the administration was concerned that significant revenue fluctuations from annual tax payments would complicate the management of government finances. In the summer of 1942, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Beardsley Ruml presented a proposal to address the government’s concerns. Ruml, treasurer of Macy’s Department Store and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, proposed that employers be required to withhold estimated income taxes from the paychecks of their employees and send the money withheld to the government each quarter. By collecting income taxes in increments each pay period well before they were due, the government could accelerate and smooth its cash receipts and improve taxpayer compliance by reducing the risk of default on large year-end tax bills. And, by focusing the attention of taxpayers on the net-of-tax take-home pay contained in their paychecks, the government could obscure the increased income tax burden it was imposing. The government eagerly embraced Ruml’s proposal, and Congress enacted it into law by the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. While Ruml’s paycheck withholding plan effectively addressed the government’s concerns, it imposed an enormous cost on taxpayers, an onerous burden that we continue to bear today. Throughout 2025, taxpayers had more than $2.6 trillion withheld from their paychecks for income tax returns due on April 15, 2026. This was a vast amount of money that the government took from taxpayers and drained from the private economy. In the absence of paycheck withholding, taxpayers could have made productive use of that cash throughout the year. They could have saved it to pay their 2025 taxes and earned billions of dollars of interest in the meantime. They could have used some of it to make short-term productive investments in the private sector, boosting the economy and benefiting everyone. The government provides no compensation for these lost economic opportunities. If a taxpayer fails to pay his or her taxes on time, the Internal Revenue Service immediately begins charging interest, which compounds daily until the late payment is made. However, the IRS does not pay a penny of interest on the trillions of dollars withheld during the year for returns due the following April. This is because, under current law, income taxes are payable when you receive your income and not when you file your return next April. Therefore, the government does not consider deductions from paychecks to be early payments. But paycheck deductions are enormous cash advances to the government that come at a real and significant economic cost to taxpayers. The Republicans can, and should, use a third budget reconciliation bill to correct this unjust one-way flow of interest payments and mandate economic neutrality in the income tax withholding system. They should direct the IRS to develop regulations that provide for interest payments to taxpayers on wages withheld and advanced to the government, with those interest payments calculated using the same percentage interest rate the government uses to calculate interest payments due from taxpayers who miss an IRS deadline. The development of regulations by the IRS, or any government agency, is a complex process. There will be many details to work out. But Republicans can clearly set the direction of the process with legislation that establishes the fundamental principle that taxpayers must be compensated fairly for the significant economic burden they bear due to paycheck withholding. The government gets many valuable benefits from paycheck withholding. It is only fair to make the government pay for those benefits. *** J. Kennerly Davis has worked as a finance executive for a Fortune 500 company and has served as a Deputy Attorney General for Virginia.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Every year around this time, a familiar debate ignites about kindergarten graduations. On one side, the naysayers insist it’s absurd to throw a ceremony for a child who has accomplished nothing more than survive the lunchroom and learn his ABCs. On the other, sentimental moms line up with their phones out, ready to capture a pint-sized graduate in a delightfully tiny cap and gown. There’s no settling that debate — because whether a five-year-old needs a diploma is genuinely a matter of preference. But there’s a related question that gets almost no attention, and it’s the one I actually care about: When a school cancels a tradition and never brings it back, is it teaching kids that their milestones don’t really matter? I found out the answer to that firsthand. The post-COVID world rearranged a lot of things that used to be customary. Stores that ran 24 hours now close at 9. Parents who used to read to kindergarten classes as “mystery readers” haven’t been invited back, with no real explanation and no timeline for return. Small, ordinary rituals went away in 2020 and then never came back because nobody in charge had a reason to bring them back. At my kids’ elementary school, one of the casualties was the third grade moving-up ceremony. This annual ritual didn’t involve hours of names being read in a crowded arena. It was simpler than that, just a short recognition that the kids who’d spent four years in the same hallways, with the same teachers, were about to leave it all behind for middle school. It was perfectly done, not excessive in the least. And then, like the mystery readers, it just stopped happening. I found out what was lost when my son came home with his official third-grade diploma — the kind that used to be handed out in front of his class — crumpled at the bottom of his backpack, mixed up with broken crayon stubs and the accumulated debris of the school year. Nobody had announced his name or clapped for him. This certificate of achievement went from a filing cabinet to a backpack to the trash, where the only ceremony was me unfolding it and wondering if things could be different.  I emailed the principal. When that didn’t get results, I went to the superintendent. I was prepared to go to the school board next, and I said so. At one point during our meeting, the superintendent leaned back in his chair and asked me, “Why does this matter to you so much anyway? The kids don’t care.” He might be right that an eight-year-old isn’t heartbroken to skip walking across the stage to accept a diploma, beyond being upset that he doesn’t have an excuse to miss class. But that question missed the point.  These ceremonies aren’t just for the kids. They’re also for the parents who have spent four years packing lunches and signing reading logs and watching a kid go from barely able to tie his shoes to becoming someone almost unrecognizable. And even if it were just for the kids, there is merit in making a big deal out of milestones.  My husband, for the record, was not on my side of this fight. He’s in the camp that sees kindergarten graduations and moving-up ceremonies as, in his words, “celebrating mediocrity.” He likes to invoke Bob Parr, better known as Mr. Incredible, from the 2004 Pixar film, in the scene where his wife gives him grief for skipping his son Dash’s school ceremony. “It is not a graduation. He is moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade. It’s psychotic,” Mr. Incredible says, becoming genuinely angry about the topic. “They keep inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but when someone is genuinely exceptional, what do they do?” Daily Wire host Matt Walsh also spoke out against kindergarten graduation last month, responding to a viral clip of a kid fidgeting through his kindergarten graduation. He posted in response to the video, “When I am president I will ban ‘kindergarten graduations’ and impose steep retroactive fines on every school that has had one over the past 20 years.” “The Incredibles” speech resonates with conservatives because it’s true that participation trophies are a problem. But the real argument here isn’t that moving up one grade is a huge achievement; it’s that as a society, we’ve gone from celebrating everything to caring about nothing. Acknowledging a milestone, however ordinary, teaches a child that ordinary milestones are still worth noticing. That’s a different claim than “everyone gets a trophy.” A ceremony that takes 10 minutes and ends with a photo for the family album is just worth it. There’s a wider version of this happening outside of school gymnasiums, and it’s the same instinct: nothing is formal anymore. There was a time, inside living memory for many, when women put on gloves and heels to go to the grocery store. Now, wearing pajama pants to run errands is just a given. It’s all part of the trend, which is watching formality disappear from everything in life. Kids notice it and emulate it. If nothing at school is ever treated as a big deal — not finishing elementary school, not the transition into a building three times the size, and leaving childhood behind — then the lesson isn’t “stay humble.” It’s “none of this counts.”  I won the battle with the school eventually. The superintendent approved bringing the ceremony back, and this year, for the first time since before COVID, the gym was full of adorable graduates called up one at a time to shake the principal’s hand and smile for the misty-eyed moms. My daughter was one of them, and it made me so happy. I say, keep the kindergarten graduations. They’re little for such a short time, and we moms deserve every photo op we can get.

Move over, Texas — the Lone Star State’s got a Senate candidate who can’t cut the apron strings. James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democratic pol running against Attorney General Ken Paxton for Senate, has exactly one checking account to his name — and he shares it with his mother, The Washington Free Beacon reports. That’s right, Mama Talarico is a joint account holder on her grown son’s Wells Fargo account, which holds somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000, according to financial disclosures. When a reporter asked his campaign why a nearly 40-year-old man needs Mommy on his bank account, they didn’t bother responding. Some things are too embarrassing even for spin doctors. The financial umbilical cord runs even deeper. Back when Talarico was a ripe 32 years old, his parents literally paid for him to move — filing a campaign disclosure showing an in-kind contribution of $1,437.84 for “moving expenses.” Mom and Dad also pumped $5,000 each into his state rep campaign that same year. And in a head-scratching twist, Talarico — who bought a $400,000 Austin home in 2022 — still lists his parents’ address as his business address in official filings. Apparently, the family home is more than just where Mom co-signs the checks. To be fair, Talarico does earn something — the Texas House pays its members a princely $7,200 a year. He’s supplemented that poverty wage through consulting work with MAYA Consulting, a DEI firm that helped school districts craft diversity plans during the height of Black Lives Matter. He reportedly pocketed around $80,000 from the firm in 2025. Tofu doesn’t pay for itself. Speaking of tofu — that’s another headache for the would-be senator. A resurfaced video shows Talarico proudly declaring his 2022 campaign “a non-meat campaign,” boasting that they’d only order from vegan restaurants as the only “moral thing to do” because eating meat is an “existential” climate threat. Paxton’s camp has gleefully dubbed him “Tofu Talarico,” and even President Trump piled on: “You can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas.” The DNC frantically posted a photo of Talarico gnawing on barbecue. Damage control never smelled so smoky. Then there’s the ideological whiplash. Talarico — who once voted against banning transgender surgeries for minors and gushed that “trans children” were what he loved most in the world — now suddenly claims he opposes gender reassignment surgery for kids. He’s also reinventing himself as a “border security Democrat” after previously demanding ICE agents be banned from wearing masks and calling deportations “terrorism.” The rebrand is breathtaking in its cynicism. As American Principles Project president Terry Schilling put it: “He’s just been too much of a radical during his time in the Texas legislature.” Mama Talarico marched in “No Kings” protests and joined her son on the campaign trail — including an appearance on The View. But Texas voters may have a simple question come November: if Talarico can’t manage his own checking account solo at 37, why should they hand him a Senate seat?

Vice President JD Vance is a busy man. For the better part of a week now, almost every major American news channel has had a near-permanent box tucked away in its lower right-hand corner, teasing a forthcoming appearance from the architect of the Trump administration’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. This media blitz has had a Twilight Zone-like feel. The signing of Vance’s accord with the Islamic Republic coincided with the release of “Communion,” the VP’s narrative about his journey into the Catholic Church. For those counting at home, that’s two items to sell: a book about his faith and a high-stakes international agreement with the rogue, theocratic regime whose hands are coated in American blood. It goes without saying that the wannabe heir to President Donald Trump’s political movement – who opposed Operation Epic Fury at its outset and now must extol its virtues while also celebrating its conclusion – finds himself in an exceedingly difficult, and indeed pivotal, position. Still, the president saw fit to say it. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD!” declared Trump at his G7 conference presser on Wednesday. “You better be careful, JD!” Half-joke, half-warning — one wonders if Vance cracked a smile or a knuckle. With about a year until the 2028 election cycle kicks off in earnest, his performance could prove to be either the shot in the arm his prospective presidential campaign needs or the shot in the head that stops it in its tracks. The results so far have been mixed at best. First, the good. JD Vance is at his best in enemy territory. Remember, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author was widely regarded as a disastrous vice-presidential nominee right up until the moment he killed Governor Tim Walz with a devastating combination of kindness and Yale Law School-honed polish during the pair’s lone debate in October 2024. Vance was similarly impressive during his appearance on Tuesday’s edition of “The View,” where he amiably handled a barrage of questions from not one, not two, not three, but six antagonistic women. With the tone of a particularly patient parent, Vance muddled his way through unfriendly questions about Epstein, race, inflation, immigration policy, and his faith. He quickly disarmed his interlocutors with a joke about their differences. He presented his transformation from Hitler-crying Chicken Little to right-hand man on the not-insignificant subject of Donald J. Trump as an act of humility. He aptly made the case that decency demands the enforcement, not the neglect, of immigration law. Joy Behar came away from the experience so thoroughly charmed that she later revealed she had urged him to run for president during a commercial break. ”I don’t think that he’s a bad guy,” mused Behar, who even went so far as to admit he had a “good vibe.” It’s no surprise that the interview in which he wasn’t asked about his signature achievement to date was the one he performed best in. Nor should it shock that, when he wants to, he excels at speaking the language of America’s progressive elite class. After all, he cut his teeth playing the “Good Republican,” writing fawning New York Times op-eds about “Barack Obama and Me.” Despite his humble beginnings and meteoric rise through the rough-and-tumble MAGA political ecosphere, Vance is still the accomplished Yale grad with an intuitive understanding of what appeals to and revolts the average white-collar Democrat; in no small part because he once did — and perhaps still does — share many of their sensibilities. Where he’s faltered, though, is on the news of the day. Vance spent an awkward conversation with Megyn Kelly walking the aforementioned tightrope of making the irreconcilable cases that both Epic Fury was a success and that signing the Memorandum of Understanding in its current dismal form was imperative. Ultimately, his own views — which are shared by the increasingly crankish Kelly — came through. In rebutting the deal’s critics, Vance failed to so much as erect strawmen, opting instead to beat up on loose hay. “Fundamentally, if you look at what they’re proposing, they’re proposing an endless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian,” he declared, before begging Kelly to push back on these apparent lunatics “from inside the tent.” This is how the vice president rewards the supporters of his boss’s most consequential decision of his six years in office? With vile, lazy smears directed at them in an effort to placate a figure who has lobbed the same smears at his own administration? This is not a man with the requisite judgment to win a fight for the Republican Party’s nomination, much less be trusted with the keys to the White House. His unpreparedness for the bright lights was even more manifest during a sit-down with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who asked him prior to the deal’s formal release, “Why not allow the world to see whatever this deal is you signed with Iran?” “Yeah, so there are some frankly diplomatic protocols that I don’t fully understand. The Qataris and the Pakistanis, who have been helpful in mediating this agreement with the Iranians, they’ve asked us not to release the full text for a little while,” replied Vance. “We’re actually trying to push them to get it out today because we want to tell the American people what’s in this deal. It’s fundamentally a good deal for the American people, but it’s also very simple, and I’ve also seen some misrepresentations about it.” His claim not to “understand” the “diplomatic protocols” at play was both suspect and of grave concern. The point person for the entire enterprise was unable to wrap his head around the reason for concealing the contents of the agreement from his constituents? It almost came as a relief when the deal leaked and it became clear that he had lied: the administration had been delaying because it knew the reaction to the establishment of a $300 billion war chest for the mullahs, the failure to secure the Strait of Hormuz over the long-term, and the unenforceable demand that Israel lay down its arms in the fight against Hezbollah would be justly apoplectic. Perhaps the vice president merely misspoke when he characterized the accurate representations of his deal as “misrepresentations.” Worst of all, though, was an assertion Vance made during a Monday evening conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “The coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system — senior leadership, even IRGC officials — say, ‘You know what? We may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust. But we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let’s try something else,’” he marveled. Isn’t it neat what nice things notorious liars will say when their opponent has removed the boot from their neck and extended a $300 billion bag among numerous other concessions? A contempt for the Democrats’ doe-eyed naivete about the nature of America’s enemies has long been among the right’s unifying organizing principles. Vance would replace it with the rebranded Obama-ism to which he has always subscribed. In “Communion,” Vance frets that his critics will always view his Road to Damascus moment vis-à-vis Trump as “a politically cynical maneuver to gain political power.” By embarking on a mendacious press tour spotlighting the continuities between the Never Trump Vance of yesteryear and the MAGA enforcer of today, he has rendered that fear a self-fulfilling prophecy. In June 2026, JD Vance won the battle over Trump administration policy, but lost the war for the soul of his party. It makes for a striking parallel to the shooting war America has just forfeited at his behest. *** Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.