Sam Russek
I'm a writer from Houston, Texas, currently a reporter-researcher for The New Republic. I'm also an Associate Editor at OR Books, where I coordinate and edit a book series in partnership with The Nation.
Before that, I was part of Business Insider's investigative team, where I helped build a database of Eighth Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" cases filed by prisoners across the U.S., which exposed how recent court decisions and laws made it nearly impossible for incarcerated plaintiffs to seek recourse.1 The work was a finalist for the Livingston Award for National Reporting and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts. I've also fact-checked work on the state of public defense on death penalty cases in Harris County, on outsourced public defense contracts in rural California, and on portions of Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" podcast, seasons 10 and 11.
For tips, story ideas, or job opportunities, you can reach me through my encrypted email or DM me on Twitter for my Signal.
Was asked to review this book; it made me think through the role of "informal" labor in the process of gentrification, particularly in touristy areas, under the watchful eyes of the police.
July 7, 2025
Found that a big-name Republican strategist—who drew up ads playing both sides of Israel's war on Gaza in 2024—was curiously backing a nobody in Harris County, among the most diverse regions in the country.
May 24, 2025
To accompany a photo essay, I was asked to contextualize the Syrian Civil War, and what it means that Bashar Al Assad's regime is no more.
December 14, 2024
Days after the 2024 election, I looked at what went wrong with Colin Allred's online-first Senate campaign.
November 12, 2024
A review of Abolish Rent, the excellent manifesto and guide to the housing crisis.
October 11, 2024
Spoke to Letitia Plummer as she announced her campaign for TX-18; an interesting piece, if only because, after our interview, she called me late at night to change her position on arming Israel.
August 1, 2024
I grew up watching Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale's commercials, but he's also spending big to push the state even further right.
March 20, 2024
Pervez Agwan wanted to unseat centrist Lizzie Fletcher in Houston. His campaign has been rocked by mass resignations, a lawsuit, and an arrest.
December 12, 2023
Verso re-released "The Palestine Laboratory," about how Israel sells its weapons and spyware to practically anyone, after October 7. I felt it worth reviewing then, as the world watched Israel's assault on Gaza unfold
November 24, 2023
In a rare step, Houston-area Democrats turned on one of their own, Kim Ogg, who gained her seat in the 2018 blue wave but acted anything but blue once in office.
October 23, 2023
Found this HBO series troubling—and unable to grapple with all it means to police inside a reservation.
October 20, 2023
Disappointed in Mayor Sylvester Turner, progressives wonder if they'll be stuck with John Whitmire, a pro-labor conservative Democrat.
June 20, 2023
A clipped historical overview of the Texas Democratic party and why it's so good at losing.
May 17, 2023
A 2023 bill in Texas ended up preempting any local eviction moratorium in the state—and its author was herself a landlord.
May 1, 2023
The Texas state government has taken over more and more local school districts, ostensibly because of test scores, but I looked back at the history of student movements in Houston to counter that narrative.
March 22, 2023
Houston as "Housing First" city leaves much to be desired; this deep dive explains how and why it doesn't work as promised.
February 24, 2022. (This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.)
A rejoinder to my 2022 piece in The New Republic, this one looks at formerly homeless tenants organizing in two apartment complexes in South Houston and the problems they faced in doing so.
May 6, 2024
For a certain kind of Texas liberal, Lawrence Wright can do no wrong. I take issue with this—and with much of the Texas lib-left imagination!—in this review of Wright's new HBO docuseries.
March 27, 2024
While thinking through the state takeover of Houston's school district, I happened on this book, which considers the liberal and conservative forces that poured resources into the charter school movement.
November 15, 2023
A conversation with Daniel Goldhaber about adapting Andreas Malm's How to Blow Up a Pipeline into a politically-minded thriller.
April 13, 2023
The murder of her son radicalized Madeline Brame. Now, the right has embraced her as the muse of the movement to quash the most progressive bail reform law in the US.
November 8, 2022
Luis Buñuel's most famous film is a furious, if restrained, critique of the wealthy and a scathing look inside their collective unconscious.
Spring 2023 (Print)
To be sure, a right to counsel for tenants—meaning tenants have a right to an attorney in eviction trials—is a step in the right direction, but the scale of the housing crisis is massive; in New York, the new statute just can't keep up.
August 16, 2022
Can you access this link? Probably not. In any case, I liked this review, and the reissue of Gavin Lambert's classic work is worth picking up.
August 5, 2022
CURBED: Broke my camera here, as it was raining on and off; seven people were arrested after protesting the removal of the tents near Tompkins Square Park.
April 7, 2022
GRUB STREET: Balkh Shish Kabab House is a perfect kind of New York restaurant.
Nov 1, 2021
A delightful interview (at least, I thought so) with Matt Hern, author of Outside the Outside: The New Politics of Suburbs on what dispersed neighborhoods mean in an age of mass protests (with an eye toward Houston, of course).
April 12, 2024
On Verso's new English edition of Ludovico Silva's 1971 classic (trans. Paco Brito Núñez).
April 12, 2023
Following up my on-the-ground report for Curbed, a conversation with John Grima, also known as Ramza, who was subjected to repeated arrest and police harassment for camping near Tompkins Square Park.
May 9, 2022
Before Abundance, there were so-called "data-driven" solutions to mass incarceration, a bipartisan effort to defang anticarceral movements.
November 6, 2023
An interview with Adrian Nathan West, author of the novel My Father's Diet.
January 31, 2022
Meant to be a pre-'24 election piece in which I took the temperature of Houston-area Democrats trying to figure out what's next for the party.
August 2, 2024
The city's subterranean shops are still feeling the pandemic's toll.
July 9, 2021
During the pandemic—and, lest we forget, Winter Storm Uri—Houston-area tenants were still being evicted in droves. I followed one woman, Evelyn Powers, as her landlord forced her out of her home.
March 17, 2021
Among my first "newsy" stories—about a fraterniy at my alma mater with deep connections to Robert E. Lee. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, the chapter made a social media post that the national organization said violated protocol.
August 17, 2020
Robert and Vickie Lyle's lives revolve around hunting and trapping hogs. Wildlife refuge managers count on them to keep the destructive pigs in check.
April 20, 2020
Will Boone's first solo exhibition probes what the Lone Star State means to outsiders and insiders alike.
November 21, 2019
Every night of the week, revelers walk into Sacrament Tattoo to get inked.
November 12, 2019
The unexpected fate of Houston’s Northside holds lessons that the city’s boosters may not wish to hear.
December 2, 2024
Incidences of mold in Texas homes exploded after the mid-February storm, which burst pipes and allowed moisture to seep into buildings' foundations at a rapid rate.
September 9, 2021
Tenants at Villas Del Paseo were without water for weeks after February's winter storm. Now, they're organizing to demand better conditions at their complex.
April 1, 2021
DJ Screw's life and work act as a springboard for 15 mixed-media artists, reflecting ideas of identity and agency outside the mainstream.
March 16, 2020
During the pandemic, tenant unions were finding new (and old) ways to organize.
March 12, 2021
Considering the web of nonprofits that attempt to act as a quasi-safety net in Houston.
December 21, 2020