Evan Vucci/AP

President Trump, flanked by House Speaker Paul Ryan (l.) and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (r.) in this September file photo, has high hopes for pushing tax-cut legislation through Congress.

As Congress returns from a Thanksgiving break, Republicans in the Senate are prepping for what they hope will be a rapid final push on tax reform.

A vote on the Senate bill could come later this week. The House has already approved a similar bill with some $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years, spread across households and businesses.

The sales pitch to Americans is that pretty much “everybody” will see their tax burden go down, and the economy will grow faster as a result – again an outcome that promises benefits to pretty much every American.

That message has a certain appeal. In an October CBS News poll, for example, 40 percent of Americans say they feel they’re paying more than their fair share of federal taxes, versus only 4 percent who felt their tax burden was unfairly light.

But the road to a Senate “yes” later this week looks anything but smooth, and one key reason is that the Republican tax-cut plans are raising many questions about fairness that appear unanswered – either doubted by the voting public or unsettled among Republican lawmakers themselves.

Among the simmering questions:

• A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) over the weekend concluded that the Senate bill’s benefits flow predominantly to the rich, while many low-income Americans would effectively face higher rather than lower taxes. This adds to an already hot debate about the overall distribution of the tax cuts.
• A Senate-bill provision would end the allowance for households to deduct state and local taxes from their income. That’s seen as especially hard on people in high-tax states – who are often represented by Democrats in Congress. But some Republicans hope to make the Senate bill at least more like the House one, by allowing up to $10,000 in property taxes to be deducted.
• Some Senate Republicans have voiced concerns that the Senate bill favors big corporations over small businesses, and are seeking last-minute changes to the bill.

“The other big thing,” says tax expert Caroline Bruckner at American University, is that “this is tax cuts funded by deficit spending.”

For many that creates questions of generational fairness, since tax cuts today would implicitly be paid for by taxpayers tomorrow, in an era when there’s already a steadily shrinking number of current workers to help support retirees through Medicare and Social Security.

The “growth” side of the Republican sales pitch is hardly a slam dunk, since a rising debt is seen by many economists as a drag on gross domestic product.

Meanwhile, questions of fairness – inevitably part of any tax-bill debate – have only been growing since Republicans announced their plans, starting with the House of Representatives early in November.

Conservatives’ rationale

Supporters of the Republican proposals argue that the concerns about fairness are overhyped. A key virtue of the proposals, they say, is that everyone gets an enlarged standard deduction, often resulting in both lower taxes and simplified filing.

Ditto for corporate taxes, where streamlining could help create jobs in America that benefit workers as well as shareholders, they add.

Yes, the Senate plan makes the tax cuts for business permanent while letting the individual tax cuts expire after 2025, but many backers say the ultimate goal is to make those individual tax cuts permanent, too – as has occurred with most tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush.

Small businesses are still getting tax cuts, even if they’re not always as large as those for corporations. And the state-and-local deduction tends to help the rich more than others, so repealing it is arguably a boost for fairness – even if the costs and benefits vary a lot depending on where taxpayers live.

Then there’s the Senate provision ending Obamacare’s “individual mandate” to buy health insurance or owe a possible tax penalty. The CBO reckons that lifting the mandate will mean 13 million fewer Americans – many of them low-income – will have health insurance as of 2027.

The forecast that fewer people would buy insurance, typically losing Obamacare subsidies in the process, is one the CBO sees the Senate tax plan taking money away from low-income Americans, as a group.

Conservatives, however, argue against reading this as an attack on the working class. They say Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid will still be as available as before; what’s changing is that Americans aren’t being hit with penalties if they don’t opt in.

Conservatives also say critics are unfairly pessimistic about the way tax cuts can spur economic growth – and hence draw in more revenue than expected. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, among others, argues that the “CBO has typically underestimated the growth and revenue feedback from tax cuts.”

Sticky questions remain

But even optimistic economists don’t say tax cuts will pay for themselves. That leaves the prospect of rising deficits – and the difficult questions of who should pay what – hanging in the balance as the Senate reconvenes this week.

Even the House plan, which doesn’t eliminate the Obamacare mandate or cause individual tax-rate cuts to sunset, remains very generous to wealthy Americans.

For Americans earning $1 million or more, the percentage change in taxes paid as of 2018 would be similar to what middle-income Americans get, but that means the dollar value of their savings is vastly greater.

And by 2027, those top earners would be paying an average tax rate of 30.6 percent, 1.5 percentage points lower than under today’s law, according to analysts at Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. By contrast, all US taxpayers on average would be paying about 20 percent of their income in federal taxes that year, down just 0.5 percent from today.

The debate over business provisions is also fraught with fairness questions.

Although Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is among the Republicans saying pass-through entities need a better deal, those firms aren’t synonymous with “small business.” Most small employers operate as pass-throughs, but so do some very large businesses that are owned by a few partners or owners.

All this leaves a lot of tug-and-pull left to go, as Senate Republicans race to pass a bill by their slim majority before Dec. 12 – when a special election in Alabama could make that majority even slimmer.

The Sinai mosque attack appears to represent a strategic miscalculation by the Islamic State and its affiliates, the leading suspects in the deadliest act of terror in Egypt’s history.

By waging war on a centuries-old Islamic order and attacking a common ritual of Muslim life – Friday prayers – ISIS is not only alienating the very audience it is trying to recruit, say analysts, but is turning neutral parties into enemies, potentially aiding the very government it is fighting.  

In the attack on the Al Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis, ISIS signaled it had found an “enemy” with which it could rally citizens in Sunni-majority states similar to the way it has enflamed sectarian tensions in Shiite-Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria.

But the attack, which killed more than 300 people and put a decades-old rivalry between Islamic ultraconservatives and mystics front and center, has led to widespread condemnation of the persecution of Sufis.

ISIS has frequently listed Sufis among “heretics” and “soothsayers.” In 2016, the group executed a 97-year-old Sufi cleric in Sinai, and in the January issue of its online Rumiya magazine it listed the Al Rawda mosque among Sufi “lodges” and places of worship to be targeted.

“They were unable to create a sectarian war between Christians and Muslims, and now they are just targeting Muslims writ large, irrespective of local dynamics,” H.A. Hellyer, senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, says via email.

“I think this is a bit of desperation, to be honest.”

Long-time target of Salafists

Although the violence is new, the vitriol and language are not.

Denouncing Sufis as “heretics” has become a calling card of hard-line Salafists of many stripes over the past two decades. The ultraconservative Sunni sect equates the Sufi movement’s veneration of clerics, tombs, and spiritual festivals to “polytheism” and “idolatry.”

In the power vacuums of post Arab spring Arab states, Salafi groups, backed by Gulf clerics, targeted Sufi shrines, tombs, and mosques in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. ISIS has taken the campaign a step further by using violence, demolishing Sufi mosques in Syria, assassinating Sufi clerics in the Sinai, attacking a shrine in Pakistan, and now the mosque attack.

In countries such as Egypt, where according to experts there are 3 million official members of Sufi orders and 15 million who identify with the movement, ISIS’s call to arms against Sufis has fallen flat. Sufi heritage runs deep in North Africa and is tied to local traditions and customs that even predate Islam.

Sufi practices, such as celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, to be observed by millions of Muslims this Thursday and Friday, and the Hijri calendar New Year have become pillars in many Arab and Muslim communities, which unlike Salafists or ISIS see them as acceptable.

While some Sunni Arabs may see Shiites as an extension of a hostile Iran, few would single out Sufis as a “threat” to Islam or the Arab world. Friday’s attack has led to an outpouring of support to those who identify themselves as Sufis.

Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Egyptian Sufi Muslims practice ritualized Zikr (invocation) as they celebrate Moulid Al-Hussein, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, outside the Al-Hussein mosque in old Cairo, Egypt, February 10, 2016.

“It is a very popular religious practice, and it is a popular religious order in Egypt,” says Omar Ashour, visiting professor of security studies at the Doha, Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. “By this, the group is making an enemy of a large portion of the population.”

The use of violence against Sufis, has forced many hard-line groups, themselves anti-Sufi, to condemn the attacks, exposing their own stances on Sufis to be criticized as “extreme.”

Adding to the political fallout from the attack is the fact that the mosque, although founded by a Sufi order, was frequented by non-Sufis and Sufis alike.

Mosques, although they may be founded by certain communities, are open to all Muslims no matter what school or order they follow. On Friday, the Al Rawda mosque was full of men, women, and children praying before Friday lunch, a ritual across the Arab and Muslim world that transcends boundaries, schools, orders, or doctrines.  

It may be the reason, analysts say, that ISIS and its affiliates have yet to claim responsibility for the attack – and even Al Qaeda supporters are criticizing it.

‘Turning point’

In the sheer carnage and killing of innocents in Friday’s attack, experts say ISIS may not only have lost its target audience, but has pushed them to the side of the government. It would be a strategic loss for ISIS, which has thrived by gaining the trust of disenfranchised communities across the Arab world.

In the Sinai, local communities and tribes have been largely cut off from Cairo, seeing little development, investment, or job opportunities over the past two decades. Groups aligned with ISIS such as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, now known as ISIS Sinai Province, promised to provide protection against the government. The Egyptian military’s response has been blunt and harsh, an at times indiscriminate campaign that has resulted in widespread civilian casualties and arrests, and allegations of torture, bringing life to a halt.

Caught between ISIS militants and the military regime, most citizens remained neutral, wary of getting involved. This has allowed Sinai Province, which numbers some 1,500 members, mobility in the region. After Friday, this may change. 

“I think it is a turning point, as we may see a major backlash,” says Professor Ashour.

“So far in Sinai Province, the clan and tribal support has been divided about ISIS, and the majority is neutral, without large support for the regime. This could change.”

Already, Friday’s attack has united Sinai tribes in opposition to ISIS, many signing up to join the Egyptian military’s operations and publicly urging all tribesmen to join the fight against ISIS.

Over the weekend, the Union of Sinai tribes, a grouping of one-dozen clans formed in the face of the rising influence of ISIS, issued a statement calling on its followers to join the military in its operations against militants south of Rafah, warning ISIS and jihadists that “we will not sleep until we cleanse our land of every last takfiri [apostate].”

“We call on all men and youths of Sinai tribes to join their brothers … to coordinate a greater operation with the army to completely end this black terrorism,” the statement read.

“Our men will not sleep until you are punished for your crimes. We do not have courts or prisons,” said the statement, which vowed, “we will kill you and not take you with mercy.”

Challenge for Egypt

Such support from ISIS’s erstwhile recruiting base, no matter its prior reservations, would significantly aid Egypt, which has struggled for three years to put down the Sinai Province insurgency.  

“I think that following Friday’s attack, it will be increasingly unlikely that anyone in the Sinai is going to back anything other than the effort to defeat ISIS in the Sinai, irrespective of any grievances they have,” says Dr. Hellyer.

But it remains to be seen whether Arab states can take advantage of the potential shift in public opinion to build broader support for their campaigns against ISIS. In Egypt, the military has been heavily reliant on missile strikes and tanks to counter the insurgency, causing high amounts of civilian casualties without providing local communities alternatives or incentives to aid Cairo’s efforts.

Should President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government extend a hand to an injured community, it may finally sway the campaign in Sinai and prevent ISIS’s expansion westward into Upper and Lower Egypt.

Yet in his public address after the attack, President Sisi indicated that his government was not going to change course in the Sinai, vowing to respond with “the utmost force.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was considered a probable French presidential contender in 2011 when a maid in a hotel in New York accused him of sexual assault.

The charges killed his career at the helm of the International Monetary Fund – and his political aspirations. The case also generated subsequent accusations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK.

But when feminists tried to capitalize on the moment, they failed. One website called ledire.org, or “to say it,” tried to get women to anonymously come forward with their experiences involving untoward sexual advances, but it didn’t make much of a ripple and eventually fizzled.

What a difference six years makes.

Today, in the wake of sexual harassment claims made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, it is the French have been among the most vocal internationally in calling out once-ignored abusers. France's social media movement #BalanceTonPorc, or “out your pig,” is a more pointed and accusatory version of its American counterpart #MeToo.

And the groundswell has been acknowledged at the top. “Our entire society is sick with sexism,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday, unveiling plans to put gender equity at the heart of his presidency on the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Now women are seeking to capitalize on the moment that feels markedly different, in size and scale, than the era of DSK to try and push for lasting cultural change.

“People are starting to understand that this is not just feminists trying to cause a ruckus,” says Fatima-Ezzahra Benomar, co-founder of Les Effronté-e-s, a feminist organization in Paris.

Changing male and French minds

The numbers seem to bear out a cultural awakening. Police reports of rape, sexual assault, and harassment increased by a third in France in October after the Weinstein affair became public, to 1,577, from 1,213 in October last year, according to figures reported by AFP.

Part of what is happening here is simply the global momentum that has seen women around the world join social media campaigns to condemn male aggression that has often gotten a societal shrug or, in the worst cases, been covered up or not taken seriously, even by police investigators.

In France, the outpouring also owes to a cumulative effect, the frustration felt after so little changed after the DSK scandal and the continued controversy surrounding filmmaker Roman Polanski, who fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl and has been living in France. Now with thousands of women coming forward in France, it’s not so easy to shrug it off.

Ludovic Marin//Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Saturday.

“In the past, we’ve had a tendency to minimize men’s actions, to say, ‘Oh the guy was just dense or vulgar,’ ” says Alix Béranger, the co-founder of the feminist group La Barbe, or the Beard. Now, she says, people are less accepting of that.

And that includes men themselves, says Ms. Beranger, who says their continued awareness is key to shifting public attitudes. “They’re starting to see that their colleague, boss, friend were harassers,” she says. “For men to come out and denounce things that other men have done, that’s something I hope we begin to see more of.”

The most powerful man in France already has. President Macron said Saturday during a speech at the Elysee presidential palace, which he began with a minute of silence for the 123 women killed by a partner or ex in the last year, that “it is time for shame to change camps.”

He proposed a series of disparate measures, which include bottom-up and top-down approaches to rebalance power between the sexes. That includes a proposal to set a minimum age for sexual consent, after two recent cases in which 11-year-old victims were ruled not to have been raped by much older men because the act was “consensual.” Macron also unveiled plans to create an online hotline linked to police stations. The government wants on-the-spot fines issued by police for catcalling. He also proposed new gender equality training for nursery school teachers.

Macron added, however, that this all must be done in a French context. “We are not a Puritan society,” he said.

The notion of gender equality is deeply ingrained in French culture. Macron himself ran on a campaign to make gender parity a reality in France, including in his cabinet. When debates raged in the summer of 2016 over the “burkini,” the full-piece swimwear for Muslim women, the argument among critics that had the most resonance was that the garment was anti-feminist.

'Treading a fine line'

Yet at the same time France has cherished the role seduction plays in its society, and it often distinguishes itself from what it considers the overzealous morality in America over matters of sex. In the case of DSK, while the criminal element of his case ruined his career, many French believe his sexual practices as such have no bearing on his ability to hold public office.

With #BalanceTonPorc, some here worry here about an “Anglo-American” creep.

Elisabeth Lévy, a founder of Causer magazine, which challenges the dominating media narrative, says that the reaction to Weinstein has gone overboard, confounding criminality and unsavory behavior, minimizing the former and stifling the natural interplay between men and women. “Even chivalry has become criminalized,” she says.

Beyond that, Ms. Lévy also says the social media movement gives too much power to one's word against the other. “It’s not for us, the public, to judge, nor the media. Society can’t replace the justice system,” she says. “All you have to do is denounce someone on Twitter and they’re dead socially. There’s no presumption of innocence, no legal framework for all these comments.”

Anne Berger, a professor of gender studies at the University of Paris 8, is also wary of the #BalanceTonPorc campaign, seeing the reference to “your pig” as hypocritical. “It’s possessive and symbolically reduces men to pigs. They’re essentially doing to men what they’ve done to women, which doesn’t help the transformation of relations.”

Yet it is challenging behavior in a country where “sexual tolerance is supposed to be part of the public ethos in France,” she says. “We’re treading a fine line. It’s a pouring out of anger but if you have anger without analysis, it can’t go far. It needs to go beyond denunciation.”

Moises Castillo/AP

Maria Meza Paniagua tapes a portrait of a person who was disappeared to the back of a chair, at a ceremony marking the National Day of the Disappeared, in Guatemala City on June 21, 2017. According to human rights groups, more than 40,000 people were "disappeared" during Guatemala's 36 years of internal conflict.

When immigration agents arrived last month at a modest, three-story house here to detain an undocumented Guatemalan man, it was no ordinary arrest.

By most measures, Juan Samayoa Cabrera is a “bad hombre,” the declared target of President Trump’s effort to deport as many unauthorized immigrants as possible, in contrast to the Obama administration’s prioritization of those with criminal records.

The crimes that Mr. Samayoa allegedly committed didn’t take place in this New England city, where he’s lived for the past quarter-century, mostly in plain sight of US authorities. Samayoa was a paramilitary commander during the bloodiest phase of Guatemala’s civil war, when tens of thousands of civilians died at the hands of government forces. Public prosecutors in Guatemala want him to stand trial there for murder and manslaughter. And among Guatemalan migrants living here, his name still stirs anger and fear, particularly for relatives of the massacred.

“People would say, ‘This is the guy that murdered my family,’ ” says Lisa Maya Knauer, a sociologist and anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, who has studied Guatemalan migrants in New England.

Samayoa’s detention raises questions about the priorities of immigration enforcers and the presence of other accused war criminals living in US. From one angle, it vindicates the Trump administration’s more expansive policy. A previous deportation order against Samayoa, who had been rejected for US asylum and told to leave the country, was closed in 2011 after the Obama administration laid out new guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“The Samayoa case and others like it show that US law enforcement can make decisions about targeting the worst human-rights violators living among us and properly removing them for criminal prosecution in their own country. This is an important and humane part of what our government is and should be doing,” says Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit in Washington that has provided archival evidence for war-crimes trials.

But Ms. Doyle and other experts on war-crime investigations say such cases are lengthy and complex, involving specialist divisions of ICE and other agencies, and less about hitting deportation quotas. That makes it hard to draw a direct line between federal policy and the timing of a high-profile arrest.

That Samayoa was notorious in his community and subject to an arrest warrant at home didn’t automatically put him on a fast track to extradition, says Jo-Marie Burt, an associate professor at George Mason University who tracks justice in Guatemala and has served as an expert witness in US war-crimes cases. “The offices tasked with identifying alleged war criminals living here in the United States are overwhelmed with the caseload that they have,” she says.

Human rights investigations “are very long and resource-intensive,” says Shaun Neudauer, a spokesperson for ICE.

On Monday, a federal immigration judge in Boston handling Samayoa’s case convened to schedule a bond hearing next month. Although Samayoa, who is being held in an ICE facility in Massachusetts, wasn’t in court, more than 20 of his friends and family, including his Guatemalan-born wife and daughter, turned up to show support and offer to testify in his defense.

Samayoa’s attorney, Hans Bremer, declined to speak about alleged crimes committed in Guatemala and noted that his client was only being held under US civil law. “No criminal proceedings have been brought against him,” he says.  

An attorney for ICE told the court that Samayoa may not be eligible for bail because of “human-right violations in his own country” and submitted a three-inch-thick folder of documents on Samayoa to contest his release.

In a 2004 appeal against his removal, Samayoa defended his actions as a paramilitary commander in Guatemala as justified by the threat from guerrillas. His legal submission claimed that he had later been attacked by guerrillas and nearly died, and had illegally entered the US in 1992 to escape further retribution. The appeals court rejected his claim.

To Guatemalans who lived through the repression meted out by men like Samayoa, such claims are grimly ironic.

One woman, who declined to be named, alleges that Samayoa abducted and killed her father and uncle when the family lived in Quiché region. She was 10 at the time. Her mother told her that Samayoa, a short man with light hair who wore a sombrero, had beaten the two men to death and thrown their bodies in the river. (A United Nations-backed truth commission later listed both men as victims of war crimes.)

Four years ago, the woman, who moved to Providence to escape domestic abuse in Guatemala, was standing in line at a drugstore. She turned around and saw a middle-aged man behind her. “He was wearing a sombrero. He was short. It was him,” she says. “Do I speak to him about what he did to my father?” she remembers thinking.

Outside she confronted Samayoa in the parking lot, asking him if he knew her father. When he heard the name, “he got nervous. His hands trembled.” The woman walked away, shaken by the encounter and the fact that Samayoa lived in Providence.

Others in the community were also aware of Samayoa and his notoriety, says Dr. Knauer. But “they were very fearful” of his influence here and in Quiché, where their relatives live.

In 2014, officials from ICE and the Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section contacted Knauer to ask about Guatemalan migrants who might have information on Samayoa. She referred them to individuals who she knew to have direct knowledge of his alleged crimes and could help build a case.

After Samayoa fled the country in 1992, Candido Noriega, a fellow paramilitary commander in Quiché, was put on trial for murder, rape, and torture. Noriega, who died earlier this year, was convicted in 1999 of six counts of murder and two of manslaughter and sentenced to 30 years in jail, the maximum permitted. His conviction was hailed at the time as a rare example of justice being served in a conflict in which at least 200,000 people were killed or disappeared.

In recent years, prosecutors in Guatemala have grown bolder in bringing war-crimes cases against military officers and other perpetrators of notorious massacres. In 2013, former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity but the sentence was overturned on a technicality.

Samayoa is subject to an arrest warrant for the same crimes as Noriega, says Hilda Pineda, head of the Special Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala City. Prosecutors have prepared testimony from 15 witnesses, mostly family members of those who were murdered and disappeared by the local militia, as well as forensic evidence. Since many witnesses are elderly, their accounts have been taped by prosecutors, she says.

Ms. Pineda says prosecutors didn’t know where Samayoa was living until they were contacted in February by the US Department of Justice, seeking details of his alleged human-rights violations. This information could be used to prove that he lied in his asylum claim, she says.

In 2010, a former Guatemalan special-forces soldier who took part in a 1982 massacre was sentenced by a US federal court to 10 years in prison for lying on a citizenship application. He can still be deported and put on trial in Guatemala for his crimes.

A similar fate could await Samayoa. For now, he’s another ICE detainee in the Bristol County Jail in North Dartmouth, Mass. Immigration violators are usually held in a separate area of the jail from regular inmates. But ICE’s facility is so crowded that Samayoa is in another section, waiting for his day in court. 

With reporting by Louisa Reynolds in Guatemala City.

Ricardo Hubbs/ Crown Media United States LLC

Daniel Lissing and Erin Krakow portray their characters Elizabeth Thatcher and Jack Thorton in the 2016 Christmas episode of "When Calls the Heart" a Hallmark Channel mini-series.

Darren Triplow has an unusual occupation. He flies helicopters in Rwanda to help conservationists watch for poachers illegally hunting black rhinos. To unwind when he’s at his home base in Washington, D.C., he’ll sometimes settle in front of the television. But it’s not the weekend game that he turns on. It’s the Hallmark Channel.  

“I like the content. The shows are family-friendly – it’s not riddled with violence like you see in a lot of shows on these days. And there’s usually always a happy ending to it,” says Mr. Triplow, who has been a fan of Hallmark’s programming for the past couple of years and likes to watch with his wife and two children. “It’s just easy to watch and it’s relaxing, which is kinda hard to find on TV these days.”

And Triplow is not that unique in his TV-watching habits. In 2016, Hallmark saw a 10 percent increase in total viewership and a 26 percent increase among viewers 18-49. During the 2016 election week, it ranked No. 4 among primetime cable networks – even ranking above MSNBC.

Television has long served as a form of escape. For many viewers, with its 24/7 feed of TV miniseries and movies full of white picket fences and wholesome family values, the Hallmark Channel has become a growing safe haven for those weary of the violence, conflict, and uncertainty churned out by both news broadcasts and apocalyptic-themed TV dramas. 

Shows like "The Walking Dead" and the happy content from Hallmark are like two sides of the same coin, says Wheeler Winston Dixon, Ryan professor of film studies at University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Both offer appealing counter-realities.

“Some people feel that a return to the past is possible, that we can get through this. Other people feel that apocalyptic times will solve all their problems by just erasing everything,” says Professor Dixon.

Younger generations may be drawn by the fact that on the Hallmark Channel, homeownership, solid careers, and relationships are easy to come by.

Amy Jamison, a college professor in Michigan and a longtime viewer, appreciates Hallmark’s guaranteed happy ending that offers her a chance to decompress after a long day.

“As soon as I get home … I just want to settle in for a good movie,” she says, adding that  “the predictable, happy ending is something that’s comforting, especially when you’ve got a lot going on."

Of course, Professor Jamison admits Hallmark may not be for everyone. "I don’t hide the fact that I watch it, but sometimes I’m a bit hesitant because it’s not everybody’s cup of tea,” she says.

The popularity of Hallmark movies are following a familiar cyclical pop culture pattern, notes Cathy Perron, an associate professor in the film and television program at Boston University’s College of Communication. She points to similarities in the era of western movies. Westerns were considered quite violent for the time, and while they were wildly popular in the 1930s through the 1950s, they were soon followed by a counter-trend of family-oriented dramas, such as “I Love Lucy” and “Leave it to Beaver." 

“[H]istorically, when there have been some difficult times, many viewers tend to migrate toward content that represents … a more gentle time,” Professor Perron says. “If you look at what the television networks ... have for new programs, they’re all very much either crime or war-centric. And when they introduce something like ‘This is Us’ or ‘Modern Family’ … people gravitate toward that….”

Just like the family dramas of the 1950s, the Hallmark Channel and other feel-good shows like “This is Us” are bringing back the idea of TV content for all, where the whole family can watch and share in the experience, says Perron.

Austin Romo, a recent college graduate and flight attendant, says he most enjoys watching Hallmark movies with his grandmother and siblings. “She gets enjoyment and pleasure from spending time with her grandkids … and we all share a love for and enjoyment of watching the shows with her,” he says, adding that while he didn’t initially expect to like the saccharine predictability of Hallmark scripts, he has grown to appreciate its stories.

While many may roll their eyes at the mention of Hallmark, wait a beat and people may just admit that Hallmark is exactly what they need.

“It’s not so much burying your head in the sand, it’s just taking a break from what is assaulting you on a daily basis,” Perron says.

For Tanja Moneyhun, a pet groomer from Alton, Ill., and a dedicated Christmastime Hallmark viewer, the intensity of the news overwhelms her and she looks forward to Christmas, when she can take a break with the warm, calm content. “It’s almost like a hug,” she says.

Hallmark is also attempting to keep viewers hooked over multiple installments by recently introducing miniseries such as “When Calls the Heart" and "Cedar Cove." To meet the increased demand, Hallmark has announced 33 new Christmas movies and launched a new network, Hallmark Drama, this past October, to join the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. But don’t expect any hard-hitting topics. The channel will likely stay true to its brand.

“Hallmark is zigging when everyone else is zagging,” says Perron.

AP Photo

Actor and composer of Puerto Rican descent Lin Manuel Miranda distributes food to victims of Hurricane Maria in La Placita de Güisin, in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, Nov. 7.

End-of-year holidays such as Christmas have long been marked as a time for generous giving. The kick-off event has lately become “Giving Tuesday,” an initiative started in 2012 to counter the commercialism of Cyber Monday and Black Friday. And during this “giving season,” at least one act of charity usually stands out. This year’s winner may be Haiti.

Despite being devastated by a 2010 earthquake, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere made a big donation last week. It promised to give $250,000 to other Caribbean islands hit by hurricanes Irma and Maria.

The amount may seem small, especially given the billions needed to restore those islands, including Puerto Rico. And many wealthier countries are promising millions in grants and loans. The amounts were pledged last week at a special donors conference sponsored by the Caribbean Community, an organization of 15 nations and dependencies.

But as a percentage of Haiti’s wealth, the donation is almost sacrificial. And it ranks up there with the biblical tale of the poor widow who gave away a high proportion of her income.

Compassion is often easier for those humbled by the loss of material well-being, whether it comes by poverty or disaster. Such givers may be better able to recognize others in need and be more willing to come out of themselves to help. Their special kind of empathy can be as healing as the gift itself.

In the United States, individuals give more to charity than do philanthropies and private companies. While wealthier individuals give more money in absolute terms, often it is the poor, or those making less than $45,000, who give the most as a proportion of income. And these so-called sacrificial donors are most often found in the poorest regions, such as the South, and give 12 percent of their income.

A good example of this phenomenon comes from Puerto Rico, one of the poorest parts of the US. A survey of the territory’s residents in 2014 found a very high propensity for giving. Three out of 4 households on the island reported making charitable donations. In the rest of the US, just over half of households give to charity.

Haiti’s pledge to its neighbors has yet to receive much acknowledgment. Yet it didn’t expect much. Its own experiences have left a humility that seeks to give without receiving credit.