menu_open Columnists
Alex Shephard

Alex Shephard

New Republic

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

The New Red Scare Is Here—and It’s Dumber Than Ever

For more than a decade, the biggest story in America has been Donald Trump, and for good reason. A real estate conman and reality TV star somehow,...

yesterday 0

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Democratic Establishment Is Running Scared in Michigan

No primary—especially a Senate primary—should go on this long. But Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, having dragged on for months, has...

monday 2

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The 2026 World Cup Was a Cynical Triumph

The official team photo of Spain’s celebration at Sunday’s World Cup final looks the same as it always does, more or less. Rodri—the team’s...

20.07.2026 7

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Does Soccer Still Explain the World?

Forget the $10,000 tickets and the travel bans and the fact that the last three World Cups have been hosted in Russia, Qatar, and Donald Trump’s...

17.07.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Lindsey Graham Embodied the Republican Party’s Authoritarian Drift

The best obituary of Lindsey Graham appeared not after his death on Saturday, but exactly a year before the event that would define the final stage of...

14.07.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump’s Forever War Is Finally Here

Over the last two days, the United States has struck nearly 200 sites in Iran and killed 14 people, according to Iranian state authorities. Iran,...

10.07.2026 4

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Joy of the World Cup Just Collided With Trump

This year’s World Cup has been unusually thrilling on the field, even by the tournament’s high standards for drama, and has largely gone off...

06.07.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Great American State Fair Is a Great Trumpian Disaster

“There are tons of people here,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former TV quack who now runs Medicare and Medicaid, at the Great American State Fair on...

01.07.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Donald Trump Has Fully Lost the Culture

Have you seen Donald Trump lately? You may have spotted him attempting to spin his “not final” Iran deal as anything other than a total...

18.06.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Can the 2026 World Cup Be Rescued From Trump and Infantino?

Omar Abdulkadir Artan may be the best soccer referee in Africa. He’s certainly one of the best in the world. We know this because he was one of just...

10.06.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Affordability Politics Are Here to Stay

“I should be securely in the middle class,” Kris Massey, a 57-year-old nurse practitioner who lives near Nashville, told CNN. “I should be fine,...

28.05.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Gaza Wasn’t the Biggest Omission in the Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy

If you’ve read anything about the Democrats’ “autopsy” of its 2024 election loss, which was released Thursday after being suppressed for...

22.05.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Trump Administration’s Iran Plan Is Even Crazier Than We Thought

In October 2005, days after Israeli forces killed a commander of the Hamas-aligned militant group Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

20.05.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Bob Dylan’s Argument With God

Ron Rosenbaum’s latest book, Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed, is not a biography. It is instead a “kind of biography”—which is a distinction...

13.05.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Democrats Have a Joe Biden Problem. Again.

When was the last time you thought about Joe Biden? If the answer is “recently,” that’s probably a sign that you should consider taking up a...

07.05.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump Doesn’t Care If He Wrecks the Global Economy

On Monday, President Trump gathered more than 100 small-business leaders in the East Wing of the White House to take a victory lap. His return to the...

06.05.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump Is Weighing Two Options for Iran. They’re Both Horrific.

One side effect, it seems, of threatening to destroy an entire civilization is that subsequent, less apocalyptic attempts at intimidation fall a...

29.04.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Iran’s Hard-Liners Have Trump’s Number

If you were, for some reason, to only get your news about the war in Iran from the president’s Truth Social feed, you might be under the impression...

23.04.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump and FIFA Have Already Broken the 2026 World Cup

Take a random moment from Trump’s second term—his inauguration, a state visit to the Middle East, a meeting of the preposterous “Board of...

19.04.2026 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

JD Vance Is on a Hell of a Losing Streak

Has anyone in the history of the world failed in more geographically disparate places in as short a time as JD Vance? Over the course of less than a...

13.04.2026 10

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The MAGA Civil War Is Just Getting Started

Who’s the biggest nut job in MAGA? That question pretty much sums up the civil war that has broken out between Donald Trump and a growing number of...

11.04.2026 50

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump’s Staggering Humiliation in Iran

There were two ways to read Donald Trump’s unprecedented threat on Tuesday that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if the Strait of Hormuz...

08.04.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Wait, Did the Democrats Just Win a Government Shutdown Fight?

For 41 days, Senate Republicans refused to entertain any bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security that did not include funding for...

27.03.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

This Is How Forever Wars Begin

In the final year of President George W. Bush’s second term, his administration asked Congress for $190 billion to continue funding the wars in Iraq...

19.03.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Iran, Not Trump, Decides When This War Is Over

A week ago, President Trump effectively declared victory in the Iran war. “We’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won,” he said during a speech in...

18.03.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Is JD Vance Rooting for the Iran War to Fail?

If you want to understand how Donald Trump is managing the Iran war, a glimpse at the president’s recent public statements tells you all you need to...

14.03.2026 50

New Republic

Alex Shephard

With the War in Iran, Trump Has Launched His Own Brand of Forever War

As the Iran war drags on and the death and devastation grow, I keep returning to a three-minute clip from a Republican presidential debate in February...

13.03.2026 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump Has Already Thrown the 2026 World Cup Into Chaos

For half a century, FIFA’s leaders have dished out bribes and raked them in as they’ve cozied up—and handed the World Cup—to despots and...

11.03.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Neocons Got What They Want in Iran. They Still Want More.

“Donald J. Trump saved the world from real chaos,” Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “Thank God Trump did this.”

10.03.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Republican Meltdown Over Iran Is Just Beginning

On Monday, two days after the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran, Megyn Kelly began her SiriusXM show by saying she was praying for...

04.03.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Dangerous Incoherence of Trump’s War With Iran

Now what?

01.03.2026 90

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Winners in Trump’s America Are Not You and Me

The United States, you may have heard, is the “hottest” country in the world. It’s a phrase that President Trump often deploys to sell his...

26.02.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

These Are Not Your Father’s Democrats

Janet Mills, the 78-year-old moderate who has served as Maine’s governor since 2019, is staid and a little boring—which is exactly why, last fall,...

13.02.2026 200

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Hilarious Decline of MAGA’s Brief Cultural Relevance

07.02.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump and Musk Knew Exactly Who Jeffrey Epstein Was

04.02.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

What Bari Weiss Doesn’t Get About CBS News

30.01.2026 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump Has No Way Out in Minneapolis

27.01.2026 20

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Subtext of Trump’s Batshit Speech in Davos

22.01.2026 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump’s Newest Voters Are Abandoning Ship

17.01.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Trump’s Obsession With Real Estate Is Fueling a Ruinous Foreign Policy

14.01.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Real “Donroe Doctrine”: Spectacular, Made-for-TV Violence

08.01.2026 60

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The Venezuela Invasion Is the Apex of Trumpian Foreign Policy

06.01.2026 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Marco Rubio Is Not the Adult in the Room. He’s the Warmonger.

26.12.2025 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Bari Weiss’s Big Secret Is That She’s Boring

28.11.2025 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Playing the Long Game

25.11.2025 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Donald Trump Is a Lame Duck Now

21.11.2025 50

New Republic

Alex Shephard

The 2026 World Cup Is Trump’s Authoritarian Debutante Ball

19.11.2025 50

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Chuck Schumer Needs to Go

11.11.2025 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

Republicans Only Have One Plan to Deal With Shutdown Pain: More Pain

07.11.2025 40

New Republic

Alex Shephard

How Zohran Mamdani Fixed the Mistakes That Cost Democrats in 2024

06.11.2025 30

New Republic

Alex Shephard