Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The Supreme Court is seen, April 19, 2023. An announcement about the abortion pill was awaited Friday in Washington.

Update: After press time, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that mifepristone should remain broadly available while the appeals process continues. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated in a dissent that they would not have granted a stay. Our story has been updated to reflect that decision.

For the past week, the U.S. Supreme Court has been considering a contentious case involving the widely prescribed abortion pill mifepristone. The justices decided Friday evening to block a lower court ruling restricting nationwide access to the drug while appeals continue. The stay represented a victory for the Biden administration and the FDA’s core authority to approve and regulate medication.

It’s the first time the court has wrestled with the abortion issue since it struck down Roe v. Wade last June, and the litigation has raised a host of questions beyond just abortion. One central question in the case is whether the justices should be considering it at all.

That question concerns the legal doctrine known as standing. The doctrine limits the jurisdiction of federal courts, per the United States Constitution, to certain “cases” and “controversies.” When a case is brought to a federal judge, standing is the first thing they have to determine.

Legal scholars have criticized the standing doctrine as being too subjective and giving judges too much discretion in deciding which complaints get heard. In recent decades, the Supreme Court has restricted when standing can be awarded. The abortion pill case, however, has reached the justices via some unusually elaborate and tenuous standing arguments on the part of lower courts and anti-abortion groups.

The case has quickly extinguished the hope the court expressed that in overturning Roe last year – a ruling that damaged its credibility with half the country – abortion questions would be left to the states and their elected representatives. The case seeks to ban the use of mifepristone even in states where abortion is legal. And it’s testing the high court’s commitment to one of the judiciary’s core tenets: Where does its jurisdiction end? And does that depend on the issue in question?

The mifepristone case isn’t the only one the justices will rule on this term that critics say has dubious standing. During the oral arguments for the Biden student loan case, the justices themselves debated the question of standing at length.

The mifepristone case “is a little bit of a bellwether,” says Scott Anderson, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It’s [not] clear that the sort of strategy coming out of this case, where you see a super bold view of standing out of the [lower courts], that the Supreme Court is” also on board, he adds.

“Something the justices will have to wrestle with”

The intention of standing is to limit the cases federal courts hear to only those in which clear and concrete harms are at stake, prohibiting parties from filing lawsuits to challenge laws or policies they simply don’t like. In the mifepristone lawsuit, the parties differ radically on whether those harms are clear enough.

Brought by a coalition of anti-abortion organizations and physicians against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the lawsuit seeks to revoke the approval of mifepristone by the agency. The FDA first approved the drug in 2000, and it is one of two drugs used in medication abortion. More than half of all abortions are now carried out using medication, according to a survey from the Guttmacher Institute.

In the past two weeks, both a federal judge in northern Texas and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided against the FDA.

While the District Court stayed the agency’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, the 5th Circuit panel narrowed the stay to 2016 FDA actions expanding access to the drug. The standing analyses in both rulings have been consistent, and they have raised eyebrows.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Activist Nadine Seiler of Waldorf, Maryland, demonstrates in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, April 20, 2023.

Both lower courts agreed that the physicians – or a member physician in one of the organizations – have standing because they’ve had to, and with “statistical certainty” will continue to have to, give emergency care to women who experience complications after taking mifepristone. The organizations also have “associational standing,” the panel found, because the FDA’s regulatory actions around the drug forced them to divert “time, energy, and resources” away from other activities. 

Critics have warned that such a broad view of standing would allow, for example, emergency room doctors who treat gunshot victims to challenge gun laws, or allow environmental groups to challenge federal actions that damage public land that one of their members may one day want to visit.

This analysis also appears to violate several Supreme Court precedents. And the FDA insists that the injuries related to complications from mifepristone, which has been used by 5.6 million women, are overblown.

The anti-abortion organizations’ standing argument “rests on a wholly misleading portrayal of mifepristone’s well-documented safety record,” the agency writes in a brief to the high court.

“Over the nearly 23 years mifepristone has been on the market,” the agency continues, “respondents purport to identify only ‘three doctors’” who were forced to participate in abortions because of complications. “Three examples from over 20 years of experience would not suggest that any particular doctor faces an imminent threat of such an occurrence.”

Years of Supreme Court precedent narrowing the standing doctrine also seems to have been sidestepped in the lower courts, according to legal scholars and the FDA.

In a 2013 case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, the court ruled that to achieve standing, a threatened injury “must be certainly impending ... and that allegations of possible future injury are not sufficient.” The arguments around organizational standing also appear contrary to a 2009 case, Summers v. Earth Island Institute. In that case, the court wrote that “some day” intentions, “without any description of concrete plans, or indeed any specification of when the [injury] will be, do not support a finding of the ‘actual or imminent’ injury that our cases require.” And in a case two years ago, the court held that “the risk of future harm cannot supply the basis for their standing.”

“The direction it looks like the court is going is one where standing doctrine is narrowed,” says Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. 

“The standing arguments in this case push in the other direction, and that’s something the justices will have to wrestle with,” he adds.

A “squishy” standard?

Standing doctrine is often criticized, even across ideological lines.

Legal scholars have described it as “squishy” and “inconsistent.” A federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump has described it as “incoherent in theory and easily manipulable in practice.” Even Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s most conservative members, dissented with his liberal colleagues in that 2021 case.

The mifepristone case has given this debate a national spotlight, Mr. Anderson says.

“Standing doctrine is pretty wildly problematic,” he adds. “It’s extremely fact-specific, and extremely [dependent] on subjective judgment in a lot of cases.”

“That’s a big problem for our justice system,” he continues.

Nathan Howard/Reuters

Anti-abortion activists (left to right) Katie Mahoney, Patrick Mahoney, Peggy Nienaber, and Mark Lee Dickson hold a prayer vigil to call for the Supreme Court justices to ban mifepristone, in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, April 21, 2023.

The Supreme Court may not follow suit here, “but that reveals the whole problem with standing as a doctrine,” Mr. Anderson adds. “It creates this gatekeeping function where judges can open or close the door depending on if they want to or not.”

Indeed, the mifepristone litigation alone has illustrated the malleability of the standing doctrine.

Hours after the federal judge in Texas stayed the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a federal judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to make no changes to the status of mifepristone in 17 states and the District of Columbia where abortion is legal. The conflicting order likely accelerated the actions of federal courts in the Texas case, but the Washington ruling also contains some suspect standing analysis.

The judge in the Washington case “issued an order saying the agency can’t do something the agency hasn’t expressed any desire to do,” says Professor Adler. Typically, standing should prohibit parties from using the courts to maintain the status quo.

“The whole thing is just everyone trying to use the courts to advance their particular view of what the right policy should be in this area,” he adds. “And the courts are appearing to go along.”

The judge in Washington also accepted the standing argument that a change in the status of mifepristone would harm the states economically. It’s an argument that Texas and other Republican-led states have used in recent years, particularly in challenging the Affordable Care Act, and while it’s not a slam-dunk, it can make federal policymaking very difficult. 

“It’s kind of unlimited standing,” says Elizabeth Sepper, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“There’s nothing the federal government can do that won’t affect a state economy in some way,” she adds. “It’s a challenge for federal lawmaking if a state can challenge anything the federal government does.”

The cases’ rapid timeline may have exacerbated widespread standing issues in the mifepristone litigation, says Professor Adler. But in another way, the judiciary’s behavior this month echoes the Roe era.

“For a long time conservatives complained, I think correctly, that abortion jurisprudence had a kind of gravitational force on other areas of the law, [bending them] to protect abortion rights,” he adds.

“It would be ironic, to say the least, if the Supreme Court or lower courts were now going to do the same thing in reverse.”

With an expected Ukrainian spring counteroffensive looming, military drone pilots work on their targeting in a training camp ringed by forests.

Again and again, to simulate an on-the-fly attack on Russian troops and trenches, the soldiers attach dummy grenades to a small flying drone, fly it to altitude, then release the dud ordnance while in motion.

Again and again, the grenades thud into the moist earth near the target, prompting cheers or jeers from fellow troops, as they prepare for the high-stakes battle to come.

These light infantry volunteer soldiers of the 500-strong Dnipro-1 battalion say they are not deterred by the fact that the counteroffensive will be a critical inflection point in a war that began with Russia’s invasion 14 months ago. Nor, they say, by the fact that roughly 70% of their ranks – fresh replacements for wounded soldiers – enter that fight with little combat experience.

And neither, they add, are they deterred by leaked Pentagon assessments suggesting that the counteroffensive could fall “well short” of Kyiv’s war aims.

“It doesn’t matter if there is a leak; we will still have to liberate our country and go into a counter-offensive,” says Col. Yurii Bereza, the Dnipro-1 battalion commander.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Col. Yurii Bereza, commander of the Dnipro-1 battalion, which is preparing for Ukraine's expected spring offensive, in the Dnipro region of Ukraine, April 19, 2023. Colonel Bereza says the Pentagon leaks are not distracting him or his soldiers from their job: to reclaim lost territory.

“We know what we have to do: it is [recapture] Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea, occupied areas of Kherson region,” says Colonel Bereza, who has held five separate battalion commands since the mid-1990s.

“It’s still a job we have to do, so [the leak] doesn’t influence me or my soldiers. ... We don’t pay attention to it at all,” he says. “For me, the fact is that we will win this war – I understand that. But we must win this war saving as many of the lives of our soldiers as possible.”

The Pentagon’s early February assessment said Ukraine faced “force generation and sustainment shortfalls,” and warned that its counteroffensive would likely achieve only “modest territorial gains.” The leaked document, labeled “Top Secret,” was first described by The Washington Post.

“Definitely, when you read this not-so-optimistic assessment, it is not good,” says Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv.

“But I think troops understand the stakes,” he says. “They understand why this offensive is extremely important, [that] it’s their territory, their people, and that we need to recover as much territory as possible to be as viable as possible, to sustain the positive cycle with successes that multiply and prolong Western assistance.”

Ukrainian officials have affirmed that some leaked information is true – such as shortages of weaponry, artillery shells, and ammunition – and has been spoken of publicly for months. Other details they dismiss as irrelevant, inaccurate, or out of date.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian Iryna Koplienko (left) and her daughter Veronika Briatko at the grave of their husband and father, border guard Oleksandr Koplienko, who died a year ago in the battle for Mariupol, in Dnipro, Ukraine, April 21, 2023. A looming Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian invaders is expected to be an inflection point in the 14-month conflict.

Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Ukrainian TV broadcasters that speculation in the leaked documents, especially about the counteroffensive, is “utterly baseless,” and would not affect military planning because there are multiple options and “everything will be decided at the last moment.”

The documents date from February and March, when photographs of them were first uploaded onto a small chatroom for gamers run by a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, who has been arrested for mishandling classified documents.

The leaked intelligence includes information about Western-supplied military equipment and concerns about Ukraine’s dwindling stocks of artillery shells.

But U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has sought to reassure Ukraine – which has received tens of billions of dollars’ worth of American military and economic assistance alone to defend itself – that it has “much of the capability” it needs “to continue to be successful.”

That is no surprise for many in Ukraine, whose armed forces repeatedly have over-performed in pushing back against the more numerous and heavily equipped Russians.

Ukrainian successes last year – repulsing the Russian advance on Kyiv, the lightning recapture of swaths of the northeast Kharkiv region, and liberation of the southern city of Kherson – have meanwhile set the bar high for a new advance.

Russia’s own winter offensive in the eastern Donbas made only marginal headway and failed to capture all of the city of Bakhmut, despite significant losses on both sides. But Russia has built new and extensive fortifications in Crimea and elsewhere, in a bid to stall Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleksandr (left) and fellow Dnipro-1 battalion soldier Dmytro Prytula load dummy grenades onto a drone for target practice, in the region of Dnipro, Ukraine, April 18, 2023.

Noting that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have made “major mistakes” by underestimating Ukraine’s fighting agility in previous assessments, Mr. Bielieskov, the research fellow, says the same may be true in the leaked documents, which apply a “gold standard” that, for example, requires air superiority and other assets for success.

“It is all relative,” he says. “And the most important relativity is that Ukrainians need to be superior to the current Russian forces – not some ideal Russian forces.”

He suggests that Russian forces are somewhat stretched, calculating a maximum of 300,000 troops along a 340-mile front.

“When people are saying there are a lot of obstacles, a lot of engineering work done, that’s right,” says Mr. Bielieskov. “Well, we need to penetrate their defenses in a couple of places only – we don’t need to destroy the whole line of defense. We just need to penetrate, and then outperform them, to keep the tempo of the offensive quicker than their countermeasures apply.

“That’s why we need a lot of preparation, a lot of intelligence, a lot of synchronization of actions,” he adds. “But it’s within [Ukraine’s] capabilities.”

And those improving capabilities are clear in the Dnipro-1 battalion training in the central Dnipro region as it recovers and rebuilds strength after 11 months of intense combat.

With just 22 killed-in-action, and an active tactical medicine program to save lives in combat, the battalion boasts an exceptional survival rate in a conflict defined by a high death toll.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Maksym Usoltsev, who put his work as a prosecutor on hold to volunteer for the Dnipro-1 battalion one year ago, near Dnipro, Ukraine, April 18, 2023. He says he’s ready for Ukraine's counteroffensive, leaks or not. “I don’t see that we have a choice; this is a question of the existence of our nation, our independence, our freedom,” he says.

The Pentagon leaks are “totally irrelevant, because you never know,” says a NATO-trained Polish instructor who has volunteered with the unit since last spring and helped overhaul its tactical medical training.

“The way we operate is way more flexible than they are, and that is our strength,” says the former Polish officer, who uses the nickname Batman and wears a beard and a tattoo up his right arm.

“The Russians don’t have the capacity to change their orders while they are conducting an operation. We have that capacity,” says Batman. “We can tell the guys to go to A, B, and C. And while they are at B, we can tell them to go to X, Y, and Z. And [the Russians] never knew what hit them. We just adapt to overcome.”

Motivation is another factor of the Ukrainian troops that he has trained, especially, to provide emergency life-saving medical assistance for hours during bouts of Russian shelling.

“We’re bending over backwards to make ends meet in training,” says Batman. “But they are motivated. ...

“We do our bit to make sure Ukrainians have far fewer casualties than the Russians,” he adds. “And if we teach them how to do it, they will do it. They just need to be given the chance to train, and given the tools to do it.”

Such attention has helped keep the Ukrainian battlefield death toll to half that of the Russian side, according to Western casualty estimates.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Ukrainian soldier who gave the name Anatolii, a lawyer with a year of combat experience, says he has "confidence and hope" as Ukraine prepares for its spring counteroffensive, near Dnipro, Ukraine, April 18, 2023.

Maksym Usoltsev, a soldier who put his work as a prosecutor on hold to volunteer for the Dnipro-1 battalion one year ago, says he’s ready for the counteroffensive, leaks or not.

“I don’t see that we have a choice; this is a question of the existence of our nation, our independence, our freedom,” he says.

“Our only task here is to free our territories and win this war. We will do this, regardless of any leaks that are happening,” says Mr. Usoltsev. “The price of that counteroffensive will be very high, for sure. But our commanders have proven already they can make successful decisions. They know how to fight wars. ... We trust them.”

Also ready for the counteroffensive is a soldier who gave the name Anatolii, a lawyer with an earring in his left ear, who signed up to fight with Dnipro-1 days after Russian forces invaded last year.

The first months he witnessed “permanent waves of fire coming in,” when the unit had little protection.

“You can feel that Russia’s army is much weaker than it was before,” he says. “This gives us confidence and hope.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.

There’s a picture of Ralph Yarl that continues to make the rounds throughout various forms of media. It’s an image of Ralph, with his box haircut and stoic smile, posing with a bass clarinet almost as radiant as the youth’s brown skin. What stands out to me is that this picture serves as public relations, although the photo wasn’t taken with that in mind. Its purpose now is to affirm Ralph’s humanity.

The reality that such an affirmation is needed is the entirety of the problem.

The Kansas City, Missouri, teen is now recovering from gunshot wounds sustained because he knocked on the wrong door to pick up his siblings.

I have often wondered the age at which society sees Black males as threats – a designation that serves as a cruel and sometimes deadly rite of passage. Previously, I allowed myself to believe that age was 12, when Tamir Rice and the toy gun that he played with were both misinterpreted as being dangerous. I have since learned that even Black preschoolers are not exempt from overzealous and punitive measures, and perhaps while not as fatal, certainly just as significant in the dictating of culture.

There is a notable flashpoint in the emergence of that culture – a silent, yet deafening 1915 film titled “Birth of a Nation.” It is aptly named. The film celebrates an era when, although slavery had ended, racist attitudes were being entrenched rather than purged.

Irrational fear of Black people is at the root of America’s racial angst, and those stereotypes have been used to justify racial violence, as explained in a statement that the movie attributed to then-President Woodrow Wilson:

“The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation ... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country.”

The enduring legacy of the Confederacy extends far beyond the Southern region of this country. Our inability to effectively hold violent white zealotry to account remains evident – one recent example being the failure to muster more police protection for the nation’s capitol against the violent protesters of Jan. 6. At the same time, irrational fear too often treats Black activists seeking equality and self-determination as dangers to public safety or even as treasonists, which further deepens the lines between the American dream and the “American nightmare,” as Malcolm X put it.

That fear – perpetuated by media, by Moynihan reports, by mug shots – revealed itself in a Kansas City neighborhood and, except for a miracle, would have claimed Ralph’s life. According to Ralph’s account of the shooting, that fear haunted him from house to house as he begged for help and for someone to call the police.

That same trepidation cost a former Florida A&M football player his life some years ago. Jonathan Ferrell had been in a car accident and sought nearby help. He knocked on a resident’s door, who promptly called the police. Mr. Ferrell ran toward the police and after one officer employed a stun gun and missed, another officer fired the fatal shots.

Against stereotypes, against supremacy, against all odds, Black males find they can express humanity. I see it in my progeny, two beautiful children who look like their father. I see it in the similitude of Ralph Yarl’s expression and complexion, his boyish looks, his smirkish grin. It exists in soulful handshakes and head nods.

Such humanity also affirms itself in self-defense, as Huey Newton and the Black Panthers did in ideology and action during crucial points in 1967. Mr. Newton declared that Black people had “begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated and everything else” against historical and system wrongs, only to be met by “more repression, deceit, and hypocrisy.” This desire for safety is a response to justifiable fear. And fear is the thing. 

Some believe we should attack fear with facts, others with feelings. I believe we should employ both. The rightful telling of history cuts through ahistorical “lost cause” narratives of the Confederacy, and modern-day incarnations of those who fight Black authors and critical race theory with such fervor.

More compelling than literature and legislation, however, is love. The moment this week when students walked out of Staley High School in Kansas City for their friend, their brother, their classmate will endure for their entire lives. The gesture suggests more than the anti-establishment nature of children, or a burning desire to leave class. This might be the start of the best lesson they will ever engage in, that to know your neighbor is to love your neighbor, and any violation of that sacred bond means we ALL must respond.

Update: On Saturday, Wrexham picked up the win it needed for its National League Victory. Our story has been updated with news of their promotion to the Football League after 15 years.

Inside a packed Welsh soccer stadium, two Hollywood actors watch as a player lines up a kick at goal. The celebrities arrived from the United States this morning. Like the almost 10,000 spectators here, they’re riveted by this clash between host team Wrexham and visiting Notts County.

In the 49th minute of the game, Notts County player John Bostock strikes the ball he’s lined up. It curves with the parabolic arc of a boomerang. The “bend it like Bostock” kick sends the ball into the top right corner of Wrexham’s goal.

The two actors swap worried expressions. A whistle blows for halftime. It’s the first of many dramatic moments in an early April match that will be hailed as a classic. 

Wrexham has long been the “Bad News Bears” of soccer. It wasn’t always so. During the 1970s, Wrexham Association Football Club was the pride of this rural, working-class town. But when Wrexham’s economy waned, so did the team. Fifteen years ago, the club was demoted to Britain’s most lowly soccer league – four tiers below world-famous teams such as Manchester United. It’s languished there ever since.

In February 2021, Wrexham AFC was sold to two new owners: Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. When they introduced themselves to Wrexham supporters in a Zoom call, some fans laughed in disbelief. The actors’ gambit – chronicled in the hit streaming series “Welcome to Wrexham” – is to propel the team to the next tier by winning the National League. Call it an act of business philanthropy. Sports can play a fundamental role in sustaining social connections. The more successful the team becomes, the more it buoys the spirit of the hometown.

“Any time where a community is under stress, whatever kind of stress it is, sports is always going to be some sort of a framework that they can hang their emotional wellbeing on,” says Larry Olmsted, author of “Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Understanding.”

While viewers may not be aware of the impact that the documentary series has had on Wrexham, residents definitely are.

“We’ve got something more now to look forward to,” says Kelly Pritchard, who’s enjoying a night out with friend and fellow mother Cerys Stevens. “There’s more of an atmosphere now, you know, where all the Wrexham people can kind of, like, get together.”

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

Almost 10,000 spectators crammed into Wrexham's stadium, the Racecourse, for the April 10 game between the home team (in red) and Notts County.

This month, Wrexham AFC’s season hangs in the balance. Wrexham and rival Notts County are neck-and-neck in the points tally that will determine which team gets promoted. The April 10 clash between the two is billed as the most important game in the history of the National League. Even before play started, the city hummed with anticipation.

“All season long I always knew it was going to come to this,” sighs season ticket holder Darren Griffiths, on the eve of the match. “People are begging me for a ticket for tomorrow.”

Mr. Griffiths, a plumbing engineer, isn’t accustomed to seeing his team winning. But his semi-retired father, Dave, recalls halcyon days when football was the Saturday afternoon pastime for workers in the coal mining and steelworks industries.

“It declined when the heavy industries closed,” says Dave Griffiths, who spent a year working at Brymbo Steelworks. “Really badly, because the support only comes through success.” 

Wrexham’s last coal mine closed in 1986. Five years later, the blast furnaces at Brymbo Steelworks were extinguished forever. Some manufacturing companies remain, but Wrexham’s near-stagnant population growth is now among the lowest in Wales. By contrast, the cathedral city of Chester, England, 11 miles to the north, has grown by about 28,000 people over the past 20 years.

“A lot of people are going from Wrexham to Chester to eat and drink – there’s a better quality there,” says Neil Manuel, walking through the town with his wife, Donna, after an early dinner. Their two boys, who grew up here, now live in Chester. “They need to regenerate Wrexham. You walk up and down the street, there’s a lot of shops empty.”

“It’s dead,” agrees Donna Manuel, pointing out the “For Sale” and “To Let” signs plastered on the pallid windows of empty storefronts. “Wrexham is charity shops and hairdressers.”

Wrexham’s stadium, dubbed the Racecourse, is the world’s oldest international football stadium. It was once regularly attended by more than 15,000 people. By 2019, it had plummeted to a little over 4,000. But to call the remnant “loyal” is an understatement. In 2011, over 2,000 faithful fans formed the Wrexham Supporters Trust and bought the struggling team in a crowdfunding effort. Mr. Reynolds, best known as Marvel superhero Deadpool, and Mr. McElhenney, star of the sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” were inspired by their devotion.

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

On April 10, Wrexham mayor Brian Cameron and his wife Kerry honored football team co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney with the Freedom of the Borough award for their contributions to the community.

“We said from the very beginning that we wanted to be drawn into Wrexham’s story and not the other way around,” Mr. McElhenney tells the Monitor during an interview at the stadium. “And that means that we should and want to be a part of the community. ... That’s something that’s really important to us.”

The night before the big game, a singalong breaks out in The Turf, the pub next door to the Racecourse. “It’s Always Sunny in Wrexham,” a recent composition by local band The Declan Swans, features an upbeat chorus: “Less than a mile from the centre of town / A famous old stadium crumbling down / No-one’s invested so much as a penny / Bring on the Deadpool and Rob McElhеnney.”

The singing voices include a handful of Americans. Pub owner Wayne Jones, who installed the song on The Turf’s jukebox, says he and his wife, Michelle, spend several hours a week conversing with “dozens and dozens” of tourists visiting from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Brazil, and China.

“Every restaurant seems to be full. The hotels are full. Even little local businesses like taxi drivers and ... food delivery guys, everybody just seems to have a tiny little piece of the pie,” says Mr. Jones. The walls of his pub feature photographs, and also autographs, of the duo that locals call “Rob and Ryan.” There’s a wood-hewn sculpture of Deadpool standing in a corner next to a pool table. 

“The involvement of Ryan and Rob in Wrexham has made a huge impact on tourism for not just Wrexham, but for North Wales,” says Jim Jones, chief executive of North Wales Tourism, in a phone interview. Wrexham is capitalizing on the momentum by investing in a new tourism information center.

The success of the team has elevated Wrexham’s profile in Britain. Last year, the U.K. government awarded Wrexham the status of city as part of a competition related to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. King Charles and Camilla, the queen consort, visited the Racecourse in December to meet its famous owners, staff, and players. It isn’t just the professional men’s team that’s benefited from the new attention and investment. Wrexham AFC’s women’s team just won promotion to the top tier of women’s football in Wales. Another coup for the area: Kings of Leon will play two rock shows at the stadium in May. Renovations to the Racecourse will attract more concerts and also international football games. 

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

After Wrexham's nail-biting win against Notts County on April 10, team co-owner Ryan Reynolds congratulates team captain Ben Tozer and his family.

Many locals express hope that, in the long run, the rise in tourism will entice the kinds of businesses that will make Wrexham a more attractive place to live. But in the meantime, everyone’s feeling the buzz.

The day before the Notts County game, Mark Taylor is kicking a ball with his sons Dan and Dylan on a field nestled like a secret garden between tightly clustered rows of houses. They stuck with the football club even during its lean years.

“It was hard for some people, I suppose, to come and watch a team that wasn’t performing. But you’ll always have your diehard fans that will remain and won’t go away,” says Mr. Taylor. “The other ones just needed a bit of a push in the end.” 

Mr. Taylor recalls that when he first bought a season ticket, he didn’t know the people around him. These days, when he makes his way to his seat up in the stands, he’s greeted by name by numerous fellow fans. 

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

Mark Taylor (left), Dylan Taylor (front), and Dan McNeil practice football near their Wrexham home. Dylan's hero is Wrexham's striker Paul Mullin.

“It’s just like one big family,” says Mr. Taylor, watching Dylan attempt a bicycle kick. “They’re hugging, shaking hands, and they love my 8-year-old son.” 

Mr. Olmsted, the author of “Fans,” says that sports have often replaced religion and other community structures as an agency for identity and belonging. 

“You don’t have to be invited. It’s not a private club. You don’t have to pay dues,” says the author. “You can be any age, any sex, any race. You just have to be a fan of that team and maybe buy a jersey and you’re in. So it’s very accepting and democratic and open in that way.”

Sports fandom helps communities heal from economic woes, says Mr. Olmsted, often by boosting fundraising and volunteerism. 

Even if Wrexham fans don’t have deep pockets, they’ll always empty them to help others. During a recent away game against Halifax Town in England, Wrexham supporters donated £1,186 ($1,475) in memory of a teenage Halifax fan who passed away. Last Christmas, pub owners the Joneses donated a week’s worth of profits to a food bank and encouraged other fans to join the effort. After Mr. McElhenney and Mr. Reynolds offered to double the donations, the final tally was £8,500 ($10,575) for the food bank and £3,000 ($3,730) for a homeless shelter. Residents interviewed say that Mr. McElhenney has also visited the food bank when cameras aren’t rolling.

Stephen Humphries/The Christian Science Monitor

Wayne and Michelle Jones stand in front of the wall in their pub that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney autographed. The pub owners are featured in the documentary series "Welcome to Wrexham."

At the big game between Wrexham and Notts County, a foam Red Dragon mascot conducts a singalong from the sidelines, its tail wagging to the rhythm. Up in the VIP box, Mr. Reynolds and Mr. McElhenney join in with gusto for “It’s Always Sunny in Wrexham.” 

The singing gets louder when Wrexham rebounds by scoring two goals early in the second half. The scores seesaw between the two sides until it’s 3-2 Wrexham. In the final seconds, Notts gets an opportunity to spoil Wrexham’s victory party. The referee has awarded a penalty kick point blank in front of the goal.

Before the game, Wrexham’s goalkeeper Ben Foster studied the kicker. He tends to strike for the left side of the goal. There’s a collective sucking in of breath as the Notts player pistons his leg. Mr. Foster’s intuition tells him to dive to the right. He deflects the ball from the bottom-right corner in a dramatic save. A bedlam of celebration erupts in the stadium. Mr. McElhenney is so overcome with emotion that, later, he kisses Mr. Foster on the lips.

“I’ve been watching the team for over 70 years,” says veteran fan David Williams, voice barely audible over the cheering. “That was one the best games I’ve ever seen.”

The following day, Mr. Jones reflects on what the win means for his hometown, which at that time was on the brink of advancing to the English Football League. (On Saturday, Wrexham clinched the promotion – with a 3-1 victory over Boreham Wood.) 

“We’re a small community, a close-knit community. Listen, we’ve got our problems. We know that. Every working-class town around the world, I imagine, has their problems,” says Mr. Jones, who’s helping his wife clean up their pub after a very late night. “But I think part of the reason that Rob and Ryan and their friends and their families love it so much is because they feel that bond. ... The football club now is obviously financially in a much better position. But the community will always need backing and will always need to stick together. And that will always be the case.”

AP

A boy walks in poppies in Lancaster, California, April 10.

The urgencies of climate change produce a steady flow of “now or never” warnings about the welfare of humanity and the planet. And yet another narrative quietly persists – one in which the resilience of nature and boundlessness of human innovation rhyme in fresh couplets of discovery and renewal.

A team of international marine researchers announced this week its discovery of a thriving deep-water coral reef stretching for miles across the submerged ridge of a previously unmapped volcano. Located within the Galápagos Marine Reserve, a vast stretch of protected waters established in 1998 off the coast of Ecuador, the find is equal parts marvel and motivation.

Such exploration is “an opportunity to apply 21st-century deep-submergence and seafloor mapping technologies and innovative deep-sea imaging techniques to reveal the beauty and complexity of the volcanic and biological processes,” said Daniel Fornari, a marine geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who co-led the expedition.

The reef provides a dazzling new view into nature’s capacity for balance and resuscitation at a time when changing ocean conditions are stressing the world’s shallower coral ecosystems. Similar lessons are flowering on land as well. A record series of storms this winter has virtually erased years of acute drought in California and germinated in a confetti of wildflowers across the state’s desert southlands so lush and vibrant that even orbiting satellites have taken note. Such “superblooms” are irregular and infrequent, but they occur in even the world’s most arid deserts like the Atacama in Chile – providing a boon to critical pollinators like bees and revealing how nature invests in itself.

“The abundance is always there,” Evan Meyer, director of the Theodore Payne Foundation, told National Geographic, “and each superbloom is seeding the future.”

As humanity grapples with a changing climate, that point underscores the newly recognized value of a long-neglected resource. Deserts are deceptive. They may appear as lifeless landscapes drenched in the planet’s most abundant source of renewable energy. Yet when superblooms occur, they provide a visual map of hidden ecosystems that can be unknowingly trampled by the aggressive development of solar farms.

One answer to that problem is tapping Indigenous knowledge. From the Mojave to the Kalahari, governments and green-energy companies are turning to the original residents of desert environments to help shape futures that are both technologically and ecologically resilient.

Last December, for example, the Biden administration instructed federal agencies to factor the “observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples” in research and policymaking.

“Indigenous knowledge contains unique information sources about past changes and potential solutions to present issues,” the United Nations climate panel has noted.

“Life is always present,” Naomi Fraga, director of California Botanic Garden, told Vogue during an earlier superbloom. It can lay dormant for decades awaiting the right conditions. But when nature and innovation rhyme, they conspire in new glimpses of awe and renewal – like newly discovered deep-water reefs and flowers visible from space and fresh bonds of appreciation within humanity.