On April 24, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it is expanding the methods of federal execution to include death by firing squad, lifting the Biden-era moratorium on federal executions, and authorizing the pursuit of death sentences against 44 defendants. The announcement came from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the former Trump personal attorney who now runs the Justice Department.
The federal government has never executed a person by firing squad. That is about to change.
What the DOJ Announced
The official DOJ press release framed this as "strengthening the federal death penalty." The specific actions: re-adopting the lethal injection protocol used during Trump's first term, expanding execution methods to include the firing squad (and electrocution), rescinding the moratorium on federal executions imposed under President Biden, and directing federal prosecutors to seek death sentences in 44 pending cases.
Of those 44, Acting Attorney General Blanche has already personally authorized seeking death in nine cases -- including three members of MS-13, two of whom are described as undocumented immigrants. That last detail was not buried. It was the opening paragraph of the DOJ's announcement, a deliberate signal about who this policy is meant to target in the public imagination.
Currently, only three people sit on federal death row: Robert Bowers (the Tree of Life synagogue shooter), Dylann Roof (the Charleston church shooter), and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bomber). All three were sentenced to death before any of this. What the new policy does is expand the pipeline.
The Firing Squad, Specifically
Only five states currently allow execution by firing squad: Idaho, South Carolina, Utah, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. The federal government has not used one since the execution of Private Eddie Slovik in 1945 -- for desertion during World War II.
The Justice Department did not explain why lethal injection, which remains available, is insufficient. The addition of firing squads serves no logistical purpose. Lethal injection drugs, while sometimes difficult to obtain, are not unavailable. The expansion is a statement, not a necessity. It signals that the administration wants executions to feel more like executions -- more visible, more visceral, more punitive.
As The Washington Post reported, the move is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to "ramp up capital punishment." Ramping up is the key phrase. This is not a response to a specific crisis. It is a political accelerant applied to the criminal justice system.
Todd Blanche Is Running This
It is worth noting who is signing these authorizations. Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal defense attorney during his criminal trials. He negotiated Trump's legal strategy, sat at the defense table when Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York, and then accepted a position in the administration he had just defended.
The man who once argued before a jury that his client should face no consequences is now the man authorizing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in 44 cases. He is doing it under a president who was himself a convicted felon before the Justice Department he now controls moved to dismiss the federal charges against him.
This is the DOJ that is now deciding who deserves to die.
What the Research Shows
Capital punishment does not deter crime. The National Research Council, in a comprehensive 2012 review of the evidence, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect were fundamentally flawed and should not be used to inform judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide rates. That finding has been replicated repeatedly since.
What capital punishment does do is execute innocent people. Since 1973, more than 190 people have been exonerated from death row after wrongful convictions. The Death Penalty Information Center documents each case. The rate of error is not hypothetical -- it is a matter of record.
The administration expanding to 44 cases knows this. The expansion is not driven by evidence that it works. It is driven by the political value of appearing tough, and by the particular satisfaction that comes from naming the targets publicly before a verdict is reached.
Why It Matters
Federal executions were rare before Trump's first term. In the final months of the first Trump administration, from July 2020 to January 2021, the federal government executed 13 people -- more than in the previous 57 years combined. The Biden administration halted the practice. Trump is restarting it, expanding the methods, and is now building a pipeline of 44 new candidates.
The announcement was made on the same day as numerous other news events, which is not an accident. Death penalty policy, rolled out on a busy news day, normalizes the expansion without inviting sustained scrutiny. By next week, firing squads will be federal execution policy, and most people will not have noticed it happen.
This is how the administration governs: loudly on immigration, quietly on everything else. On April 24, 2026, the quiet thing was the federal government announcing it may soon line people up and shoot them. The president who called himself the law-and-order candidate has a Justice Department run by his former defense lawyer, authorizing firing squads for 44 defendants, and calling it strength.
Sources
- DOJ: The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty
- Washington Post: Trump administration seeks to add firing squad to federal execution methods
- CNN: Trump's Justice Department is bringing back firing squads for federal executions
- ABC News: DOJ to allow firing squads for executions
- CBS News: DOJ reinstates firing squads and pentobarbital for federal executions
