11/2 to 11/8, 2025

This is This Week, Basically. I’m Robyn Davies. The week began with a question: one that even the Supreme Court can’t seem to answer.

Inside the marble chambers, America’s three liberal justices are quietly divided over how to survive in a court remade by the right. According to reporting by The New York Times, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson have spent months debating not cases, but tactics: whether to keep negotiating or to start shouting .

Kagan, ever the strategist, still believes in diplomacy: writing careful opinions, cultivating Chief Justice Roberts, and aiming for narrow wins. Jackson, newer to the bench and unburdened by tradition, has begun warning openly that the court itself may be collapsing. In one opinion, she accused the majority of “complicity” with moneyed interests. Kagan, by contrast, deleted her sharpest words from a dissent before publication: a gesture that says as much about restraint as resignation .

It’s a split between survival and symbolism. And as Trump’s challenges to federal authority reach the justices — including his bid to expand executive tariff powers — their divide will shape not just opinions, but the tone of the institution itself.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the age spectrum, Japan offered a very different lesson in endurance. The Times profiled five centenarians who still work every day: from a 103-year-old bicycle repairman to a 102-year-old ramen chef.

Each insists that work is the secret to longevity. Seiichi Ishii still fixes bikes in Tokyo’s Shitamachi district, riding a tricycle to karaoke nights on Sundays. “If I die here, in my workshop, I will be happy,” he said. Fuku Amakawa, stirring noodles in pork broth for the 60th anniversary of her ramen shop, says the steam keeps her skin young. Their stories are as much about identity as aging, work not as obligation but as purpose, the thing that keeps them from fading.

The contrast between Kagan’s quiet caution and Ishii’s stubborn persistence feels unintentional but poetic. Both are trying to keep their institutions alive, one the Supreme Court, the other a single small shop, by refusing to walk away.

Elsewhere, diplomacy of a different kind is playing out across the Pacific. South Korea is trying to balance between the United States, its longtime security ally, and China, its dominant trading partner. The Times described Seoul’s strategy as “tightrope diplomacy”: maintaining U.S. missile cooperation while quietly resisting economic decoupling from Beijing. One official put it bluntly, “We can’t afford to choose.” It’s a dilemma increasingly familiar in a world where alliances are both currency and risk.

Back in Washington, domestic policy found itself in a similar bind. After a court ruling delayed updates to the SNAP food benefits program, millions of low-income Americans remain stuck in bureaucratic limbo, waiting for new disbursements that were supposed to arrive in October. State agencies are overwhelmed; grocery stores in some rural areas report declining sales; and the Department of Agriculture says it can’t move forward until new guidance arrives from the courts.

In Albany, Andrew Cuomo is attempting something almost as improbable as political resurrection. The former New York governor — felled by scandal, abandoned by allies — is still running, still fundraising, still insisting that his reputation can outlast the headlines. “They haven’t seen the last of me,” he told a reporter this week. What was once defiance now sounds more like compulsion — a man trying to prove his relevance by running faster than time.

And in Paris, police are still chasing the thieves behind the audacious Louvre jewel heist — a crime that left the world’s most secure museum red-faced and missing several priceless pieces. The theft, pulled off during a power outage, was so meticulous that some investigators suspect inside help. The Louvre reopened within a day, but its sense of invincibility has not returned.

Not all stories this week were about ambition or loss. In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is planning an American tour — Silicon Valley, Washington, and perhaps Los Angeles — meant to promote investment and polish his image. But aides say normalization with Israel, once rumored as the trip’s centerpiece, is off the table for now. In a region still raw from Gaza, the timing simply isn’t right.

And in the midst of all this maneuvering, something unexpected happened: Barack Obama made a phone call. The former president rang up Zohran Mamdani, the New York City councilman now preparing a mayoral run, to congratulate him and offer advice. It was part blessing, part warning. “You’ve got a big chance,” Obama reportedly told him. “Just don’t lose yourself in it.” Mamdani, who once studied Obama’s own campaigns, said he felt “seen by history.” It’s a small moment — but one that hints at how generational politics recycle their optimism, one phone call at a time.

It’s been a week of balancing acts: justices weighing civility against urgency, nations straddling rival empires, people working past the limits of age or reputation. Everyone, it seems, is trying to last a little longer — to keep something alive until the next moment arrives.

That’s This Week, Basically. I’m Robyn Davies. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.