Paul Sancya/AP

Joscha Weese, left, stands outside the Capitol building during a rally in Lansing, Mich., Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. Michigan's elections board met to certify the state's presidential election results Monday.

The Trump campaign has turned its focus on trying to delay or block certification of results in key battleground states, after largely striking out in its lawsuits alleging election irregularities amid a spike in mail-in voting this year.

The first deadline came today in Michigan, where the bipartisan State Board of Canvassers certified election results after a week of partisan tension and state lawmakers’ trip to the White House. Joe Biden won the state by a margin of 154,188 votes.

Republicans in the state, including Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, had urged a 14-day delay, citing irregularities based in substantial part on an affidavit that a judge had determined was not credible.

Norman Shinkle, one of two Republicans on the four-member Board of Canvassers and a Trump supporter who sang the national anthem at one of the president’s rallies last month, had indicated in advance he might vote to delay certification.

President Donald Trump’s outreach to Michigan election officials and lawmakers raised concerns of improper pressure and put a spotlight on what would normally be an obscure, routine meeting. This weekend he tweeted, "Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have ... the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections,” a reference to the role state legislatures could theoretically play in overturning their state’s results. 

Legal scholars describe Mr. Trump’s actions as an unprecedented effort by an incumbent president to influence the electoral process. In two other disputed elections – the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied, and 1876, when Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but Congress intervened and declared Rutherford B. Hayes the winner amid widespread intimidation of African American voters in the South – the incumbent at the time (John Adams and Ulysses S. Grant, respectively) did not intervene on behalf of one side.  

“To my knowledge, there is no historical precedent for the current moment,” says Edward Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University, who laid out a 2020 disputed election scenario in a Loyola University Chicago Law Journal article last winter, in which he envisioned President Trump attempting to press a Republican-controlled Congress to decide the election in his favor, similar to the Hayes-Tilden election.

The margins of Mr. Biden’s victory are so significant that Professor Foley now thinks it’s highly unlikely such a scenario will take place, but he admits Mr. Trump has gotten more “running room” than he thought would be possible with such numbers. “I’m still surprised at how semi-successful, if you will, he is in making this sort of seem like Hayes-Tilden when it’s not as close,” he says.

More than 32,000 people logged into Monday’s livestream of the Michigan state canvassing board, and hundreds of people submitted a request ahead of time to speak. Among them were numerous election clerks imploring the board to certify the results. They said they and their staffs had worked long hours for months to hold a successful election amid a pandemic.

“To be in this position is definitely putting our democracy to the test,” says Tammy Patrick, who worked for 11 years in the elections department of Arizona’s Maricopa County and now serves as senior adviser to the elections team at the Democracy Fund in Washington, D.C. “We knew that it would be tested in a global pandemic, but most people expected the test would be in voter turnout and participation – not whether their validly cast votes would be considered legitimate.”

After several hours of discussion, the four-member Michigan State Board of Canvassers voted 3-0 to certify the election, with Mr. Shinkle abstaining. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans have sued to block certification of their election results, which the state’s counties were required to provide today, followed by Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar’s certification in the coming days.

The plaintiffs argued that the state legislature’s move to dramatically expand absentee voting contravened the state constitution and resulted in illegal votes. If such votes could not be tossed out prior to certification, they recommended that the GOP-run state legislature should select Pennsylvania’s electors – a scenario Mr. Trump has been talking about since September, which could potentially circumvent the popular will.

With a more than 80,000-vote margin of victory for Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania, such a scenario is seen as unlikely to succeed.

If Mr. Biden is certified the winner in Michigan and Pennsylvania by Dec. 8 and the Electoral College electors reflect the popular vote in their respective states, Mr. Trump would not be able to win even if Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, all of which have been called for Mr. Biden, were decided in the president’s favor.

“[Trump and his campaign] are pretty quickly running out of cards to play,” says Keith Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University. Their litigation “has been so fruitless, and thrown out of court so easily, it really tears away any fig leaf for further delaying the process.”

All eyes on Wayne County

The push to delay certification in Michigan revolved largely around Wayne County, which includes the predominantly Black city of Detroit.

Robin Buckson/Detroit News/AP

Wayne County Board of Canvassers, from left, Republican member William Hartmann, Republican chairperson Monica Palmer, Democratic vice chair Jonathan Kinloch, and Democratic member Allen Wilson discuss election results during a board meeting in Detroit on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. The two Republicans said they wanted to rescind their votes to certify their county's results, but state officials said the certification of the Detroit-area vote will stand.

Republican Senate candidate John James, an African American combat veteran who lost to Democratic Sen. Gary Peters by some 93,000 votes, alleged that about 70% of Detroit’s absentee counting boards were out of balance – meaning the number of votes counted didn’t match the number of ballots cast. The filing says this affected “roughly 400 votes out of nearly 250,000 cast” and cited an affidavit from an IT contractor that a judge determined was “not credible.”

The Voter Protection Program said only 28% of Detroit’s total precincts were unbalanced – about half the rate seen in 2016 – and said the total number of votes affected was about 450 out of 872,469 – or about .05 percent of Wayne County’s total vote.

In a marathon meeting last week, the Republicans on Wayne County’s board of canvassers first voted not to certify the results, but then relented when, after being berated during a public comment session as racist, a Democratic member of the board offered support for an audit in exchange for them voting to certify. They agreed, but the following day signed affidavits seeking to restore their “no” votes, saying their trust had been breached. (This is not possible under Michigan state law.)

President Trump reportedly called at least one of the Republican members of the Wayne County board of canvassers after last week’s meeting – Monica Palmer, who said she and her family had received threats and described the president’s call as expressing concern for her security. On Friday, Mr. Trump hosted the GOP leaders of Michigan’s state legislature in Washington.

In a Nov. 21 letter, Ms. McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, and Michigan state GOP chairwoman Laura Cox had requested a 14-day delay for an audit, arguing that step would allow "all Michiganders to have confidence in the results."

Michigan state officials and legal experts say state law requires the Board of Canvassers to certify before an audit can take place. They note that the board serves in a “ministerial” capacity, meaning it is required by law to certify the election according to the votes certified by counties, and has no investigative powers. An 1887 Michigan court ruling held that the board was not a judicial or quasi judicial body and did not have any means or right to “inquire beyond the returns of the local election boards.”

The wild card in Michigan’s state Board of Canvassers meeting today was Republican member Aaron Van Langevelde, an attorney who works for the GOP caucus in the statehouse. House Speaker Lee Chatfield rattled many Democrats when he told Fox News after coming back from the White House this weekend that if the board delayed certification, it could set off a series of events that could end with GOP legislators appointing a rival slate of electors instead of those who would honor the vote. With Mr. Shinkle having weighed in against certification, all eyes were on Mr. Van Langevelde. 

Early in the meeting, he asked Christopher Thomas, a senior adviser to the Detroit elections staff who is widely respected, to confirm that the board is not a court and does not wield judicial power. Mr. Thomas confirmed that characterization, stating unequivocally that the board had no standing to decide legal or constitutional questions. Some speculated that the young GOP member was seeking cover for certifying the result amid the unusual political pressure. 

“I cannot remember another example of any election where there was ... partisan strong-arming of officials in the certification process,” says Ms. Patrick, who worked as a federal compliance officer for Arizona’s Maricopa County Elections Department. 

Between now and Dec. 1, three additional battleground states must certify their results: Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. If any state misses the Dec. 8 “safe harbor” deadline for certifying their results, that could potentially jeopardize their slate of electors. 

Election officials take oath seriously

But Ms. Patrick says she doesn’t think Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign will work, in part because every election official has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. 

“It’s important for readers to know that the vast majority of individuals who swear that oath believe in it and will strongly defend it,” she says. “Anybody that puts party or personality before country or that oath is a real problem. I think that is at the heart of what will be an issue for our country moving forward.”

On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence, in his capacity as president of the Senate, will receive each elector’s vote for president. If GOP-run state legislatures were to submit a rival slate, it would fall to Congress to determine which one to accept. 

Rick Esenberg, a constitutional law scholar and founder of the The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative public interest law firm, says he doesn’t see any basis for Republican legislators to make such a move. Speaking of Wisconsin legislators, he says, “They’re not going to vote to disenfranchise the entire state. And even if they did vote to do that, the [Democratic] governor isn’t going to go along with that.” 

He says the current legal challenges and political maneuvers are “a side show” and will be over soon, brushing off concerns that this could inflict long-lasting damage to the country. 

“The American republic is made of sterner stuff,” he says. 

In a contest that was coming down to the wire, it was only natural to turn to an athlete who was famous for coming through in the clutch. The competition was the 1990 Senate race in North Carolina, a heated, racially divisive match between Harvey Gantt, a Democrat and the first African American mayor of Charlotte, and the longtime Republican incumbent, Jesse Helms, a pillar of the ultraconservative wing of the party.

A famously staunch segregationist, Mr. Helms had strongly opposed the movement to create a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and some of his TV ads during the campaign had played to white racial resentment. One of them showed a close-up of a pair of white hands crumpling up a job applicant’s rejection letter, with a voice-over saying the person had lost out on the position to a less-qualified African American because of racial quotas in hiring.

In the final weeks of the campaign, polls showed that the underdog Mr. Gantt had a realistic chance of unseating Mr. Helms, and it was obvious that an endorsement from Michael Jordan, the former University of North Carolina basketball star who had gone on to international fame with the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association, might put Mr. Gantt over the top. But when asked to come out publicly in favor of the Democrat, Mr. Jordan declined. He had become a successful Nike pitchman, making millions by appearing in commercials and print ads that had sent the sales of the company’s athletic gear soaring. It wouldn’t be prudent to support Mr. Gantt and risk alienating Mr. Helms’ supporters, Mr. Jordan said, because “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

There is no telling whether Mr. Jordan’s endorsement would have made the difference in the election, which Mr. Gantt lost by about 107,000 votes. But for years to come, those four words from Mr. Jordan – which he later insisted he said merely as a joke – would cement the perception of athletes as rich celebrities more interested in their pocketbooks than politics, afraid to support candidates or wade into issues of race or culture.

Peter Dejong/AP/File

Amnesty International Secretary-General Salil Shetty (behind lectern) announces that former NFL quarterback and social justice activist Colin Kaepernick (on screen) is receiving the group’s ambassador of conscience award for 2018 in Amsterdam. Mr. Kaepernick became a controversial figure when refusing to stand for the national anthem to protest racial inequality.

Gone were the politically and socially conscious athletes of the 1960s and ’70s, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title because he refused to serve in the Vietnam War after being drafted into the Army, and John Carlos and Tommie Smith became pariahs for raising their fists in a Black Power salute on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Athletes of the 1990s and 2000s, the thinking went, were too wealthy to care about life beyond their gated mansions. There was too much money at stake for sports stars to risk driving away potential customers or sponsors by choosing sides in any public debates.

If that perception was ever accurate – and in truth, it was always at least somewhat exaggerated – it certainly isn’t any longer. There has been a resurgence of athletic activism in America, particularly by Black athletes, not seen since those turbulent days of the civil rights and Vietnam War eras.

The first stirrings of the movement came in 2010, after the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager who was followed and ultimately shot in Sanford, Florida, by a neighborhood watch member who found him suspicious even though he was merely walking home from the store. As a form of protest, the Miami Heat of the NBA took a team photo with every player wearing a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon was wearing when he was shot, their way of commenting on the injustice of a Black teen being considered dangerous merely for wearing a hooded jacket.

But it was Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem in 2016, in protest of police shootings of African Americans, that appears to have triggered the full reawakening of athletes’ social conscience. “That was the moment where I said, I don’t want to just tweet. I don’t want to just wear a T-shirt with some words of protest,” says Malcolm Jenkins, a New Orleans Saints defensive back who co-founded the Players Coalition, an organization of National Football League players devoted to social causes, including racial inequities in the criminal justice system. “I want to do something that truly makes a difference.”

Hundreds of players clearly feel the same way. Athletes in nearly every sport have stepped forward in a variety of ways to address what they consider to be social injustices, including but not limited to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. Current and former NBA players like Carmelo Anthony, Stephen Jackson, and Damian Lillard marched in protests following the Floyd killing, in which a Minneapolis police officer held him down with a knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Chris Paul and LeBron James spearheaded efforts to get out the vote before the presidential election, particularly among young African Americans.

Women’s National Basketball Association players formed a Social Justice Council in June and partnered with the Say Her Name campaign to dedicate their season to Ms. Taylor. One of the league’s biggest stars, Maya Moore, stepped away from the sport indefinitely last year to help overturn the conviction of Jonathan Irons, who had spent 22 years in prison on a burglary and assault conviction. Mr. Irons was released in July and he and Ms. Moore, now a married couple, are working to earn the release of other wrongly convicted prisoners.

Jeff Haldiman/The Jefferson City News-Tribune/AP/File

Basketball star Maya Moore (right) calls Jonathan Irons in March 2020 after a judge in Missouri overturned Mr. Irons’ convictions in a 1997 burglary and assault case. Ms. Moore, who worked to free Mr. Irons, is now married to him.

Defensive lineman Michael Bennett, a 13-year NFL veteran, retired from football in July in order to devote more time to social justice efforts, including working with Athletes for Impact, a group that encourages sports figures to get involved with worthy causes. “The idea is that not every athlete has to be another Colin Kaepernick,” Mr. Bennett says. “There are any number of ways, big and small, for athletes to bring about change in their communities.”

The activism goes beyond the ceremonial. Mr. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, joined with other current and former NBA and WNBA players, including Skylar Diggins-Smith, Trae Young, and Jalen Rose, to start More Than a Vote, an organization aimed at inspiring more African Americans to register and cast their ballot in the presidential election.

These new athlete-activists “are courageous, high-profile players who have access to millions of people with a push of the button thanks to social media,” says Etan Thomas, a former NBA player and author of the book “We Matter: Athletes and Activism.” “They are ready and willing to risk fame, fortune, and endorsements, and to endure criticism to stand up for what they believe in.”

Turning points

A variety of factors have contributed to the rise in athletes’ willingness to become politically active. Like many Americans, they have been motivated to push back against the conservative policies of the Trump administration and the inflammatory rhetoric of the president, who said that NFL players who refused to stand for the anthem should be kicked out of the league.

Days after President Donald Trump made those comments in a December 2017 speech, tight end Julius Thomas knelt during the anthem for the first time. “After I heard the president’s comments, it really struck me,” Mr. Thomas told CNN. “I was truly hurt. I don’t think a lot of people know what it feels like to wake up in this country and not feel equal.”

Frank Franklin II/AP/File

NBA star LeBron James wears an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt before a game in New York in 2014. It was a protest against the death of Eric Garner, a Black man who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer.

Player protests and other forms of activism have also been met with greater public acceptance than they were decades ago, which may be partly due to the changing demographics of the country. The U.S. population is more ethnically and racially diverse than the one Mr. Ali and others dealt with generations ago. “An audience that includes more people of color and other groups who know what it is to be on the margins is going to be more receptive to protest and activism,” says sociologist Harry Edwards, a longtime political activist who has worked with scores of athletes on social justice causes.

With that public acceptance has come support from the athletes’ teams and leagues, which once resisted and sometimes even punished player protests. In 1996, Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem before games, saying that the American flag was a symbol of oppression and that the United States had a long history of tyranny. The NBA suspended him without pay for a game, costing him more than $31,000. But that was clearly another era. When the league resumed play in August after delaying the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, not only did most of the players take a knee during the anthem as a form of protest with the league’s blessing, but the courts had “Black Lives Matter” painted on them. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver also allowed the players to have league-approved phrases on the back of their uniforms, including “How many more?,” “Equality,” and “Respect Us.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who had offered little support of Mr. Kaepernick after the quarterback began protesting, made a full reversal in August, offering a public apology to him and saying, “I wish we had listened earlier, Kap, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to.”

The National Collegiate Athletic Association also allowed players to wear phrases promoting social justice on their helmets, and Major League Baseball gave its approval to teams stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on their home fields, as well as providing players with BLM T-shirts to wear during batting practice. When the baseball season began after a four-month break for the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of players, including All-Stars Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, knelt during the national anthem, with the league’s blessing.

Players have sometimes tried to take action with fully planned protests, and sometimes with impromptu moves driven by the emotion of the moment. For instance, less than an hour before their NBA playoff game against the Orlando Magic in August, the Milwaukee Bucks decided not to play, in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the day before. Within a few hours teams followed their lead, forcing the postponement of eight playoff games over two days. The same day, the New York Mets and Miami Marlins made a statement by taking the field for their game, then walking off and placing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt over home plate as they left.

From backlash to endorsements

Although most of the high-profile athletes who have taken political stands have done so in support of liberal causes and politicians, some well-known sports figures have stepped forward on the right, as well. Legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus posted a lengthy letter of support for President Trump on Twitter 10 days before the election, and former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler retweeted it with his own message that said, “Sign me up.” Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden was hospitalized for a week after contracting COVID-19 in October, but made it clear that his confidence in the president was unshaken. After his release from the hospital, he released a letter saying that one of the motivating factors in his recovery was that he “wanted to be around to vote for President Trump.”

Andrew Dye/The Winston-Salem Journal/AP

NBA star Chris Paul (center) leads a march to vote at an early voting center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Oct. 27, 2020.

But most of the athletes who have taken a political stand have done so for more liberal politicians and causes. In some rare cases, like Mr. Kaepernick’s, they have found that their activism can make them more, rather than less, attractive to corporate America. Even though he hasn’t played in an NFL game since 2017, Mr. Kaepernick was popular enough that Nike signed him to a multimillion-dollar deal last year that included Kaepernick-branded shoes and apparel, as well as an ad campaign that kicked off last fall, complete with a national TV spot that showed images of him and other athletes protesting. “Believe in something,” the tag line said, “even if it means sacrificing everything.”

The greater support and acceptance doesn’t mean that athletes are now free of criticism for their activism. In fact, some detractors now charge that players are becoming more politically involved in order to raise their profile and their off-field income. “Told y’all from Day One this was about money,” sports columnist Jason Whitlock tweeted the day after Mr. Kaepernick’s new Nike deal was announced. “All of it.”

It is hard to imagine, though, that Mr. Kaepernick could have foreseen that his protest would lead to financial gain, not when he was initially vilified by much of the public and unable to get a contract offer from a single NFL team after he left San Francisco.

In general, players still face enough backlash that being politically active is no easy decision. They open themselves up to bashing by President Trump or being told to “shut up and dribble,” as Fox News television host Laura Ingraham advised Mr. James and Kevin Durant after they criticized the president in a TV interview.

A fourth wave

That sort of criticism is nothing new. There is a long history of Black athletes who have tried to make a social impact being met with harsh resistance. Dr. Edwards, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, frames the history of athletes’ activism in terms of “waves.”

In the first wave he includes athletes of the 1920s and ’30s, such as boxers Jack Johnson and Joe Louis and track star Jesse Owens, who represented the fight to establish Black athletes as legitimate in the eyes of white fans. Post-World War II players like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby (baseball), Kenny Washington (football), and Chuck Cooper (basketball) broke color lines in their respective sports, not only bringing about desegregation in athletics but helping to prime the pump for the civil rights movement.

The third wave encompasses the Black Power and civil rights movements of the 1960s when athletes like Mr. Ali, football’s Jim Brown, and NBA star Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics spoke out defiantly about racism and social justice in America. It earned them condemnation and a reputation as angry Black men in many circles. It may have been the criticism those athletes received that made their successors, players like Mr. Jordan, less willing to engage in controversial issues.

In Dr. Edward’s view, the U.S. is now in the midst of a fourth wave in which athletes are bringing their financial independence and social influence to bear. Will the movement last? Will it make a permanent impact on the political future of the country? That’s as hard to forecast as whether a college superstar will be successful in the pros. Circumstances change, distractions arise, news cycles move on to the next headline.

AP/File

In this iconic shot, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos raise gloved fists in a stand for human rights at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Yet the climate for athletic activism has certainly never been more welcoming. There may not be many team owners and league executives hoisting protest banners, but their players’ passion appears to have motivated them to become more engaged civically and politically than ever before. One example of that is the number of stadiums, arenas, and athletic facilities that teams made available to be COVID-19 testing places and polling places for the November election.

It’s unlikely this wave of political involvement will subside anytime soon. This generation of professional players is the wealthiest in history, which means they have the financial security to continue their efforts even if it means some reduction in earning potential. Beyond that, they have discovered that their voices can make change, however incremental.

They will also be inspired to push on because they can see the impact they are having on an individual level. Consider how Emerald Snipes, daughter of Eric Garner, who died after being locked in a chokehold by police in New York, reacted when she saw various NBA players wearing “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts over their uniforms in honor of her father as they warmed up for their games. 

As Etan Thomas quoted her in his book on athlete activism: “I was completely overwhelmed because ... I’m just this regular person from New York and you want to support me? Going against the dress code of your job, risking your livelihood, how you support your family and you’re risking all of that for my father? I was so thankful to them for doing that because I’m sure there were people telling them not to, that it would be bad for their image or that it may upset their fan base or affect their endorsements or whether a team would pick them up the following season. In spite of all that, they made this public statement for my father and words cannot express how thankful I am.”

It is true that political activism runs in cycles, and athletes may not maintain their current level of engagement indefinitely. But each cycle of voices makes it easier for the next one to be heard.

Mark Waugh/FareShare/AP

Soccer player Marcus Rashford visits FareShare Greater Manchester on Oct. 22, 2020, in Manchester, England. His popular campaign against child hunger has prompted new charitable efforts – plus a recent U-turn by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to extend free school meals during winter holidays. 

Jason Stephens remembers the hunger pains and sleepless nights following his release from jail in 2015. Unable to find work, he eventually purchased a food truck instead and sold burgers on the streets.

Fast-forward to a cold night in Britain’s second coronavirus lockdown, Mr. Stephens drives the same truck into the heart of Cardiff’s most deprived neighborhoods, handing out a thousand hot meals to children. “I was watching everyone losing their jobs in lockdown and kids going hungry,” says the Welshman. “How can that happen in modern day Britain?”

Mr. Stephens cooks and prepares food donated by Asda and Morrisons, two of Britain’s biggest supermarkets, before pulling up outside to deliver sausage, potato mash, and a traditional roast dinner from the truck, to children going hungry without their state-provisioned school meals over the late October break.

He, and hundreds of other businesses, are acting to remedy a Dickensian issue brought to the fore by the pandemic. More than 4 million children live in poverty in the United Kingdom. And while it is not a new problem, it is one that had been largely hidden from public view before the pandemic, when associated shortages amid lockdown brought the issue into stark relief.

British food poverty organization Food Foundation says some 1.4 million children reported experiences of food insecurity over the summer holidays.

But while the government has been slow to respond to the crisis, particularly as the threat of new midwinter shortages approach, British businesses and volunteers are tackling the problem head-on.

“Let’s go feed children ourselves”

About 1 in 7 children in the U.K. claim free school meals, which are available to households earning under £7,400 ($9,750) a year. Charities say the low threshold means many children in slightly higher-income households, but below the U.K.’s average income of £30,800, are ineligible for state help, forcing families to survive on food banks.

Hayley Steere, founder of Free-My-Meal, a national charity linking people who need food with those willing to cook it, remembers the humiliation of forgoing meals as a single mother working three jobs, over a decade ago.

“I remember having a huge packet of crisps for dinner every night. I thought that was okay but it clearly wasn’t,” says Ms. Steere. “I lost my choir business at the beginning of lockdown, but if I was in that situation as a single mother on benefits still, I’d need a food bank.”

The person perhaps most responsible for bringing Britain’s poverty crisis to widespread public attention is Marcus Rashford, a soccer player known for his quiet, steely determination on the pitch for Manchester United.

Mr. Rashford successfully lobbied the U.K. government to make a U-turn and extend free meal provisions for children in low-income households over the school summer holidays, when otherwise they might lose that vital food source amid the pandemic. He set up a child food poverty task force and repeated the clarion call again in October, urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to extend food provisions over the autumn and winter school break. Pressured by Mr. Rashford’s campaign, Parliament voted on the proposal, but ultimately rejected it. 

Although the prime minister has recently done another about-face, in the form of £170 million of extra funding for free school meals, anger and action had already spread across Britain. Some businesses opted for symbolic measures: One Yorkshire pub owner banned the local member of Parliament, Chancellor Rishi Sunak – one of the 322 MPs who voted against free school meals – from entering.

But hundreds more went into action, parceling food for hungry children.

“I didn’t know who [Mr. Rashford] was until I started doing this. I’m not a football fan, but my wife and mum told me about his work and it gave me the kick I needed to do something,” says Mr. Stephens, in Cardiff. “When the government voted against giving free school meals to kids, I thought, ‘Let’s go feed children ourselves.’”

Andrew Boyers/Reuters

Alex Stephens, owner of the Farm Fresh Market in Watnall, England, displays food on Oct. 23, 2020. Mr. Stephens offered free lunches to children who needed it during a fall school break.

Inspired by Mr. Rashford too, grocery store owner Paul White recruited 200 volunteers and “commandeered” a school kitchen in East Lancashire, northern England.

Using donations from Britain’s biggest supermarkets, he got the owner of a local restaurant to help with the menu. “We hired a fridge and 24 hours later, we were cooking all through the night,” he says. “We tried to replicate what kids were eating at school. It might be their only healthy meal of the day.”

Working closely with local schools, the grocery store owner set up a text service contacting families in receipt of state-provided meals and has delivered 3,000 meals across East Lancashire. 

He fears the lockdown has pushed people “who’ve never experienced hunger before into food poverty.”

“It’s worse than I imagined it to be,” says Mr. White. “Mothers and kids have been in tears on doorsteps because they were hungry.”

An alternative to the food bank

Critics argue food banks are an inefficient way of fighting both child and food poverty. In Waltham Abbey, a small town on the London-Essex border, Pesh Kapasiawala opens his door to a space that resembles something more like a supermarket. His belief that food banks are “undignified and traumatic” led him to opening community hub 3Food4U in August. Locals queue up to pick out fresh fruit, pastries, and clothes donated by supermarket giants Marks & Spencer, Asda, and Morrisons that would otherwise end up in landfill.

Mr. Kapasiawala says food banks have a bureaucratic profile, often relying on local authorities to assess recipients, which means people "can’t just turn up ... it’s not somewhere where you want to take kids to.”

At his food hub, recipients have the freedom to choose items as they walk around, including a shelf stocked with children’s toys.

About 250 families a week visit his “community surplus hub.” Young professionals, nurses, and teachers with young children browse items, saving them up to £60 on weekly shopping expenses.

With further economic concern on the horizon, Ms. Steere is well aware that Britain’s poverty trap looms precariously close to many on so-called middle-class incomes. Near her Surrey home, she received a call for emergency food from a resident living in a family-sized cottage that appeared in a Hollywood film.

“It doesn’t matter what you look like, or who you are. I’ll never judge if you’re going hungry.”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

June in Porto-Novo is usually a month of cloudy skies and heavy tropical downpours, often preceded by gale-force winds, deafening thunderclaps, and lightning. In some neighborhoods of this West African city near the Gulf of Guinea, fallen trees bring traffic to a standstill, and houses that can’t weather the storm are washed away. 

But most stand tall after each torrential rain, year after year – and a few, for more than a century. Some of these are colonial, brick, and ornate, the Afro-Brazilian architecture of the Agudas: a local community descended from Portuguese slave traders, and enslaved Brazilian people who were freed and returned to West Africa.

Each building – many of their facades worn and crumbling from neglect – is a window into the complex history of Benin, a West African country on the Gulf of Guinea, home to about 12 million people. Like many parts of coastal West Africa, modern Benin was forged by the violent globalization of the slave trade, which left profound cultural influences on both sides of the Atlantic. And in recent years, as the government and private groups have pushed to renovate the city, it’s put a spotlight on the area’s heritage – including difficult, often controversial chapters related to slavery and colonialism, imprinted on each Afro-Brazilian building.

“This is complex and politicized history, and the architecture reflects that,” says Lorelle Semley, a historian of West Africa at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Porto-Novo, she has written, is a city that has worn “its history on its landscape.”

Karim Okanla

This building was erected in the early 1900s in the colonial administrative quarters of Porto-Novo. It stands opposite to the Governors' Palace, which now hosts Benin's legislature. The building has now been refurbished to host the Office of the Mediator of the Republic, who settles administrative disputes between private citizens and the state.

A complicated legacy

The many layers of the city’s history begin with the name itself. Three centuries ago, it was a village known as Okoro. With time, people fleeing nearby raids and enslavement settled in, and began to give it new names in a bid to claim ownership, according to retired professor Jijoho Adéwalé Padonou, a former minister of education and impassioned researcher on the history of Benin. One community called it Hogbonu, another Ajatche. When the Portuguese splashed ashore, they gave it the name that persists today: Porto-Novo.

For centuries, the slave trade between local kings and Europeans forced more than a million people across the ocean, many of them bound for Brazil. But throughout the 19th century, boats of formerly enslaved people began to flow in the opposite direction – back to the Western African nations they and their ancestors had come from, including present-day Benin.

With them, they brought new skills and crafts, building multistory brick houses that recalled the baroque, colorful architecture of Brazil. The area’s new colonizers, the French, relied on returnees to erect elaborate religious and administrative buildings. The Governors’ Palace, for example – a cream-colored structure of verandas and colonnades – was built and decorated by Aguda craftsmen; today, refurbished, it hosts the legislature.

Relations between the natives of Porto-Novo and Afro-Brazilian returnees were not always smooth, however. The Agudas were a distinct community, with foreign-sounding names – the da Silvas, the da Costas – and some were multiracial. Returnees often wore bowler-like hats and long-sleeved shirts, and many recited Roman Catholic prayers before meals. 

As with returned enslaved people elsewhere in West Africa, many Agudas were given chances to attend Western schools and occupy positions of influence, working hand-in-hand with new colonial elites and slave traders’ families. 

After Benin’s independence in 1960, however, closeness to the French elite was no longer seen as a point of pride. The new country’s government wanted to affirm a new national identity, primarily based on Indigenous cultures, and in the 1970s, Marxist President Mathieu Kérékou began expropriating large tracts of private land, including from Aguda families. Many fled into exile, and the buildings they left behind fell into disrepair. 

Polishing the past

Today, Porto-Novo is Benin’s second-largest city: a town of open food markets, of Vodou shrines, which fills up with weddings and funerals on the weekends (though large gatherings have been prohibited in a bid to curb COVID-19). In almost every nook and cranny, men and women have something on display to sell – often smuggled from next-door Nigeria, the economic giant of Africa. A new mindset toward the Aguda community is in the works: So many mixed marriages have taken place that it doesn’t really matter whether the kids’ last name is da Trinidad or Bioku.

For years, critics have pressured governments to renovate all kinds of architecture, arguing Porto-Novo’s neglect did not befit a capital. But it was only in 2017, a year after the election of President Patrice Talon, that renovations began in earnest, prompting Afro-Brazilian descendants to undertake additional work on their own. Mr. Talon himself was reportedly born to a family once connected to the slave trade in nearby Ouidah. He has on many occasions insisted on the need to restore Benin’s historical legacy, and his government is spending roughly $5 million to restore a Portuguese fort in his hometown.

“What’s going on right now in Porto-Novo has never been seen before,” says Professor Padonou, who credits the president for spearheading the project.

The jewel of Aguda architecture has long been the Central Mosque, built in the early 20th century: a building that echoes the famed colonial architecture of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, with soaring square towers and multicolored facade. Churchgoers are said to have celebrated Sunday Mass there, till the building was handed to the Muslim community. Today, a larger cathedral sits nearby – it, too, echoing the baroque buildings of Brazil. 

Thanks to financial contributions by Porto-Novo’s Muslim community, interior renovation was completed only a couple of years ago, with key details preserved: vast ceilings, ornate chambers, and exceptional art, such as engravings of Arabic prayers, friezes, and pilasters.

“I’ve always admired old Afro-Brazilian style homes since I was a teenager. The architecture is beyond compare, and nothing is left to chance,’’ says Gérard da Silva, a retired literature teacher in Porto-Novo; his parents were descendants of formerly enslaved people who put down roots here in the late 1800s.

For those urging preservation of Aguda architecture, it is about more than buildings. It’s about recalling the legacies of returning people who were freed from slavery, and the central role they played here and across the region.

“I must insist on the specificity of the Agudas. They constitute a unique case of returnees in African, perhaps in world history,” says Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, a former member of the United Nations’ World Heritage Committee and of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project. “They deliberately, very consciously chose to come back to Africa, but they did so on their free will and relying on their own resources, without the help of any white missionary, like in Liberia or Sierra Leone.”

“More importantly,” he adds, “they did not return to just any part of Africa. They made it back to the very land where they or their ancestors were enslaved and bought.’’

Staff writer Ryan Lenora Brown contributed reporting.

Even though Thanksgiving is going to be different this year, it can still feel familiar. 

Governors across the United States are urging people to stay put, instead of bringing extended family and friends together for a few hours of gratitude and feasting. If you do spend time with those who don’t live with you, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends remaining masked when not eating, and staying 6 feet apart. Farmers and grocers have been anticipating pared-down menus that won’t require 18-pound turkeys, five different sides, and three different kinds of pie.

It’s not exactly the warm and abundant approach to the holiday that most Americans love. But with some patience, creativity, and flexibility, Thanksgiving 2020 can still be a day that you will remember for years to come.

The word on the bird

A general rule of thumb when buying a whole turkey: One pound feeds one person. If you want Thanksgiving leftovers, up that to 1½  pounds per person. If your gathering is going to be four people or less, an 8-pound bird will be plenty. 

Another approach: Buy turkey drumsticks or a turkey breast. Cooking smaller turkey parts means you can employ your slow cooker as you binge-watch holiday movies or football, or head outside for a fresh-air hike. If you like your table to look fancy, consider cooking small Cornish game hens, one per person.

Instead of a browned bird for the centerpiece, artfully construct a charcuterie board with cured meats, olives, dried fruit, jam, nuts, hard and soft cheeses, mustards, and honey for drizzling. Add festive small gourds, sprigs of rosemary, or autumn leaves as decorations. Post your creation to Instagram.

Or, skip cooking altogether. Support a local restaurant by ordering takeout. Pack deli sandwiches and climb the nearest summit for a Thanksgiving picnic with gorgeous views. 

Sideline control

Let go of trying to make everyone’s favorite sides this year. (Unless there are vegetarians, in which case, lean in on the side dishes.) Choose a vegetable like acorn squash that makes for easy personal servings and preferences. Add a dash of garlic powder in softened butter to melt in the middle as it bakes for a savory flavor. For those who like things sweet, add brown sugar or maple syrup to a tablespoon of butter.

If there is a yearly debate over whether sweet potatoes get marshmallows or not, make them plain and then serve them in individual ramekins with brown sugar and mini marshmallows on the side. A few seconds in the microwave or a minute under the broiler in the toaster oven will make a delicious gooey topping for those who want it.

Sweet endings

Leftover pie shouldn’t be considered a problem, but if you don’t want to eat pie for days and still prefer a variety to choose from, make your favorite flavors as mini pies. This is a great way to involve kids in the meal prep, too. Use pre-made pie crusts to keep things simple. Let the pastry thaw until you can roll it and then use a 3-inch cookie cutter (or glass jar rim) to cut circles in the dough. Tuck each round into a muffin tin and spoon in your favorite filling. 

If you have too much filling for the mini pies don’t despair: Pour any extra pumpkin filling in a custard dish and bake it. Extra apples tossed in cinnamon sugar can be a topping for oatmeal or yogurt, and chocolate pudding can be finished off when you have a moment alone in the pantry.

Gratitude jars

Don’t forget this part. It’s been a hard year for all of us, but take a moment to see where hope and progress are shining through – if it is more time with your family, house projects that finally got finished, or a greater appreciation for your neighbors – it’s worth the time to write these things down. Read them out loud to anyone who will listen, whether it’s to relatives over Zoom, at a table set for two, or to Whiskers the cat. Save them in an envelope marked “Thanksgiving 2020” and when you revisit these tiny epistles of gratitude in the years to come – maybe future generations will find them in an attic box – you’ll have put on record how you made it through with a heart full of thanks.

Pumpkin Pie Bites

Makes 12 mini pies. (To avoid leftover filling, reduce all portions in the filling recipe by half.)

1 9-inch pie crust, homemade or store-bought

1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon sea salt

¾ cup sugar

1 14-ounce can evaporated milk

2 eggs, slightly beaten

Whipped cream, optional

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Allow the frozen pie shell to come to room temperature. Lightly spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.

Mix the pumpkin, spices, and sugar together. Add remaining ingredients, and combine.

Roll out the pastry shell on a lightly floured surface until it is flat. If the dough is cracking, mound it into a ball and roll out again. Using a 3-inch cookie cutter press out circles in the dough. Settle each pastry circle into a muffin tin. With your fingertips, gently pull the edges to the top of the cup.

Using a spoon like a gravy ladle, fill each muffin cup ⅔ full. 

Bake at 425 degrees F. for 15 minutes, then reduce to 350 degrees for an additional 20 minutes. Keep an eye on the edges of the shells so they don’t overbrown. Cool and remove from muffin tins with a butter knife. 

Top with a dollop of whipped cream if desired before serving. The pies will keep for up to a week in the fridge, and for several months frozen.

AP

Boxes of ballots in Dane County, Wis., await a recount Nov. 20. The art renderings on plywood boards formerly protected local businesses during the summer's civil unrest.

Since the U.S. election on Nov. 3, presidential scholars and former administration officials have warned that President Donald Trump is harming American democracy by refusing to accept that he lost his bid for a second term. Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden has mainly focused on preparing to govern. He has criticized Mr. Trump’s stonewalling as embarrassing and called him one of the “most irresponsible presidents in American history." Yet whether deliberately or not, his reluctance to speak out both frequently and forcefully reflects the wisdom in the proverb that “a soft answer turneth away wrath.” Direct engagement with Trump or his spokespeople might evoke even stronger anger. 

And they have made room for deeper qualities – patience, integrity, truth – to prevail as more people realize the election was fair, honest, and proven. “The challenge is to give people space to step back from the binary, tribal thinking in which you are either a friend or an enemy,” writes Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis University.

In such tense situations, the wise appeal to conscience. During one of Mr. Trump’s legal challenges to election procedures, a judge in Pennsylvania posed the question to Mr. Trump’s counsel: “I ask you as a member of this court whether there were Republican observers in the vote counting room?” The president’s lawyers quietly backed down. When Michigan’s top two state Republican legislators met with Mr. Trump last week, they said afterward that the “simple truths” of a “deliberate process free from threats and intimidation” would restore confidence in the election process.

As more states certify the results of their counts and recounts, officials on the front line cite what motivates their work. 

“Working as an engineer throughout my life, I live by the motto that numbers don’t lie,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. In Arizona, Clint Hickman, a Republican on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said, “I’m not going to violate the law or deviate from my own moral compass as some have pushed me to do.”

Statements like that from the heart, especially from Republican leaders, are necessary to bring around the majority of GOP voters who still believe the false assertions of conspiracy and illegality. When those working on these elections model integrity and grace, their actions speak with a compelling moral authority.

Nine presidents have faced defeat for a second term. Only one has refused to accept the voters’ verdict. The transition of power on Jan. 20 is inevitable but will benefit from a gentle, wise, and conciliatory approach. Mr. Biden sets an example by insisting Americans stop treating opponents as an enemy. “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal,” he said after the election. “This is the time to heal in America.” Leaders in both parties are starting to show how.