Rachel Cohen

@cohen489

pragmatic optimist and well-known email author. lawyer never giving legal advice. views are mine alone. cohen489.substack.com americandemands.com BOOK RECS THAT PAY ME + LOCAL STORES:

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Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 26d

giving this but I swear I have not yet texted

Nikki Blonsky tweeting at Amanda Bynes “hey girl I texted u hit me back live u boo boo!!! Xoxo”

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 27d

I’m sure people would be really normal about a bunch of left-leaning attorneys announcing their coordinated effort to push left-leaning legal outcomes in the private sector

LinkedIn post announcing FedSoc’s new “in-house counsel network”

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 27d

ok here’s my real one which is just another version of screaming into the void about how obvious everything is

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 27d

L M A O

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 27d

also lots to work with but I’m going to just stick to this with “me when I don’t know how congressional apportionment works”

Many MAGA feel that the Democrats did not open the border for humanitarian reasons. Once the Supreme Court said that the census was to count all people, they felt the Dems saw it as a way to lessen the effect of outmigration on a liberal state’s congressional appropriation. Who knows if that is true? This line of thought leads to Trump’s push for nationwide voter ID laws.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· 28d

January 23, 2016 headline: Donald Trump: ‘I Could…Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters’

CNN clip from July 13, 2026: ICE officer "fearing for public safety" shot fleeing man, DHS says after hours of silence

An ICE officer fired his weapon “fearing for public safety” as the victim of Monday’s fatal shooting, in a vehicle, “attempted to flee the scene,” the Department of Homeland Security said in its first official statement nearly 12 hours after the incident in Maine.

The department did not share details on why the officer believed the man was a public safety risk.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 12

watching people who are mediocre advocates for women AT BEST try to capitalize on a white man’s SA to convince Michigan voters they should fear Abdul is giving me a fucking aneurysm

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 12

ohhhhhhh noooooooooooooooo

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called Mr. Graham a “beloved friend” in a social media post.
“Lindsey understood that the security of Israel and America are inseparable,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote, adding, “Israel has lost one of its greatest friends.”

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 11

how it feels to root for Norway with the intensity of a life-long fan knowing full well this is the first game they’ve played that I’ve watched all tournament

the world if meme (image of a futuristic city)

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 11

still thinking about how the city of Chicago spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars on police misconduct settlements last year and somehow that never gets discussed when people are bickering about balancing the budget

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 10

I wrote about family, and the ways we see ourselves, and white America’s determination to ignore the obvious: open.substack.com/pub/cohen489...

Some photographs of my grandfather capture him as an athlete, even ones taken decades after he hung up his jersey. In these photographs, I can really see him. I can see him in a way that reminds me that not so long ago, he, too, was in his thirties, was even younger. These photographs fill me with tenderness. I almost always send them to my friends.

Each time I see a new photograph of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, I feel briefly as though one of my friends has sent me a picture of their father. Their father likes his big hat, the smile playing across his face one that lets you picture him as a small boy.

Their father feels loved, surprised by a beautiful birthday cake, and is looking at them with so much love in return that they felt compelled to show me. Their father is standing among them, bursting with pride looking at his family, a pride so deep I can feel it radiating off him. The photographs show him so plainly. Of course they would send them.

Then I remember I do not know Lorenzo, that I know who he is only because American tax dollars paid a group of masked men to murder him because he is Mexican. I remember I do not know his children, people who learned of their father’s death via a video on Facebook that captured him begging for help as he bled out in the street.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 10

a follower saw my many posts about the “American Mom Murdered by ICE” posters and made a poster of Lorenzo for wheatpasteing—you can download it here: drive.proton.me/urls/VJ15H93...

Photograph of Lorenzo reading A BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO WAS MURDERED BY ICE ON JUSY 7, 2026 IN HOUSTON TX

Image showing posters of Renee Nicole Good with the heading: AMERICAN MON, MURDERED BY ICE

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 9

Ryan Grim 🤝 Donald Trump

snip from politico, quoting Trump
Trump: well, so he won the primary, right?
POLITICO: and now there are these new allegations.
Trump: it’s very hard for them to do. It’s really a question of whether you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 8

Lorenzo. abolition is the centrist position.

photograph of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo standing in his home, smiling, in front of a cake with candles on it that show it is his 52nd birthday.

headline: federal immigration agent fatally shoots man in Houston during an enforcement operation

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 6

truly heartbreaking quote from Jenny Racicot. i am so sick of people having to swallow their trauma for political 'harm mitigation' reasons, and if we nominated people who gave a shit about people it wouldn't be necessary

quote from platner accuser: "One of the reasons I didn't come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person," she said. "I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person."

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 2

I have been gatekeeping the Chicago Public Library’s summer reading for adults program and I’m sorry. I am breaking my silence bc looking at the available events has forced me to log on to hype up the library and also bc I don’t think you can finish 5 books before Monday when I am going to an event

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 2

good morning, I’m still on the sane-washing of Barbara but do anticipate returning to ICE and prairieland today so read up while I’m focused: open.substack.com/pub/cohen489...

Quote: the question was simple: does the constitution say what it says? the court said yes. four of the nine justices said no.

Quote: John Roberts must have lain awake on June 29, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how he will be remembered as the Chief Justice who destroyed the neutrality myth necessary for the Court to function. Instead, liberal commenters largely handed him the propaganda win anyway.

Quote: At the risk of veering into online-left word-salad territory, sane-washing might be thought of as manufacturing consent specifically for a controlled opposition. It attempts to affirm people who see the systems actions as harmful, and then reassure them that things might be bad, but they aren’t that bad. Things are that bad.

Quote: over and over, we find ourselves arguing about reality before we can discuss what should be done about reality. By the time we agree on a plan, if ever, reality has changed.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 2

lol I just went back and looked at my substack from December, when Barbara was granted cert, and this was my closing prediction *even as I predicted 7-2,* a less-horrific scenario:

The Court’s decision to grant certiorari in Barbara legitimizes the administration in asking the question at all, normalizing the idea of birthright citizenship as a question as opposed to a foundational piece of our country’s history.9 The Court’s likely eventual preservation of birthright citizenship will allow pundits desperate for evidence that the current moment is not as dire as it is to celebrate a win, gaslighting a public similarly desperate for reassurance. It focuses people’s attention on a legal issue that isn’t really a legal issue at all, no matter how much the Court wants you to believe it might be. Meanwhile, the government will continue grabbing people off the street regardless of citizenship status, blocking pathways to legal immigration, and losing people it detains.
Stay focused, stay angry, and protect your neighbors.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 1

when i feel hopeless i have to remind myself that i have met some of the coolest, most inspiring people on the planet by showing up to organize and we’re in it together and just getting started and they wake up every day and do the work and I can too bc we have to/we get to

Cassie Willson/Katie Gatti Tassin/Melat Kiros/me

me/Chris Rabb (text on screen captioning Rabb: ‘oh yeah we can say fuck ICE’)

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 1

taking a break from SCOTUS rants to watch CO-1 results and not to make it about me but I need this so badly

results screenshot with 65% in showing Melat Kiros with 47.5 and Diana DeGette with 45.1

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jul 1

iT's a 6-3 dEcIsIOn A BuNCh oF TrUmP aPPoiNtEEs diSagReeD wItH Him WE WOn

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 30

ah yes, Justice Thomas, paragon of originalism, proving originalist intent via cites to *checks notes* the Wall Street Journal and Law and Liberty

screenshot of p 52 of Thomas dissent with relevant cites highlighted

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 30

NRSC v FEC is going to fly under the radar because of just how much SCOTUS news there is today and we cannot let it—parties operating as super PACs is bad for Dems broadly given fundraising and particularly bad for left ascendant forces in the Dem party. eyes here.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 30

anything but acknowledging that the founders and constitution itself denied citizenship to Black people huh

The common law “made no distinction on account of race
or color.” United States v. Rhodes, 27 F. Cas. 785, 789 (No.
16,151) (CC Ky. 1866) (Swayne, J.). But the slave States
did. As the Civil War approached, more and more Southern
States sought to deny citizenship to black Americans—and
openly rejected the common law to reach that result.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 30

the absolute GALL of John Roberts to write this after every fucking immigration ruling this session

In a Nation of immigrants—an “asylum for mankind,” in
Thomas Paine’s words—jus soli’s broad scope took on particular importance.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 30

me rolling out of bed still mildly jet lagged to throw on a “Hot Girls for Melat Kiros” t shirt and read 200+ pages of opinions knowing thousands of ppl trying to ‘report’ first will have misframed the issues for millions of ppl by the time I’ve finished reading the actual opinions

Barbie doll with smeared makeup and disheveled hair meme

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 28

forgive me but I don’t think this is a good enough reason to fund Jeff Bezos as he decimates small business and builds out the surveillance state, also, the evergreen:

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is—we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 25

2026

texts in succession, from me:
like these fucking losers flipping on people in Spokane and Prairieland
rot
Stephen Miller is a little bitch
also happy birthday lmao

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 23

please join me in reminding god awful Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke that we know she exists c.org/NBwGNdQH

Rachel Cohen@cohen489· Jun 21

facial expression frame to frame killed me