The Department of Justice announced it will authorize firing squads as an approved method for carrying out the federal death penalty, part of a broad push to restart executions halted under the Biden administration and accelerate capital cases across the federal system.
The move, detailed in a DOJ press release, also reinstates the lethal injection protocol used during President Donald Trump's first term and rescinds the moratorium on federal executions imposed under former President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Merrick Garland. The department said it has already authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche framed the announcement as a correction to years of deliberate inaction:
"The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers."
That language, and the scope of the policy changes behind it, signals a Justice Department that intends to treat the death penalty not as a relic to be managed into obsolescence, but as an active tool of federal law enforcement.
The department laid out several concrete steps. First, it is readopting the lethal injection protocol that used pentobarbital during Trump's first administration, the same protocol that carried out 13 federal executions. Second, it is expanding the approved execution methods to include the firing squad. Third, it is streamlining internal processes to speed up capital cases and reduce the lag between sentencing and execution.
The Washington Examiner reported that the DOJ also ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to relocate, expand, or build additional federal death row facilities to accommodate more executions and the new methods. That directive suggests the department is planning for a sustained increase in capital cases, not a one-time symbolic gesture.
Blanche took over as acting attorney general earlier this month after Trump removed Pam Bondi from the post, and the death penalty expansion marks one of his most significant policy actions since stepping into the role.
The Washington Times reported that the policy goes further than firing squads alone. Blanche announced the DOJ will also authorize gas asphyxiation and electrocution as approved federal execution methods alongside lethal injection. The rationale: ensuring executions can proceed even if lethal injection drugs become unavailable or a particular method is blocked by the courts.
That practical concern is not hypothetical. For years, anti-death-penalty activists and pharmaceutical companies have worked to restrict access to execution drugs, creating bottlenecks that have delayed or prevented scheduled executions at both the state and federal level. Adding multiple backup methods removes that leverage.
The DOJ press release offered a detailed indictment of the prior administration's approach to capital punishment. It stated that the Biden DOJ "broke sharply from its longstanding approach to capital crimes" in several ways.
The department said Biden's DOJ imposed an indefinite moratorium on executions based on what it called "a deeply flawed analysis" claiming that lethal injection with pentobarbital could not be carried out without risking "unnecessary pain and suffering." The Trump DOJ clearly rejects that analysis by reinstating the same protocol.
Beyond the moratorium, the press release alleged that the Biden DOJ declined to seek the death penalty in cases where career prosecutors and Biden's own U.S. Attorneys recommended it. The cases described included child rapists and murderers, racially motivated mass shooters, and gang members and drug dealers who murdered law enforcement officers, government witnesses, and informants.
The DOJ also said the prior administration abandoned capital prosecutions that earlier attorneys general had authorized and that federal prosecutors were actively litigating, "against the wishes of victims' families and career prosecutors."
That last point deserves attention. When the DOJ drops a death penalty case that career attorneys recommended and victims' families support, the decision is not neutral. It substitutes the personal policy preferences of political appointees for the professional judgment of the people closest to the facts. The Biden administration's pattern of ideological interference in prosecutorial decisions extended well beyond capital cases.
Perhaps the most consequential action under Biden came at the end. The DOJ press release stated that former Attorney General Garland urged President Biden to commute the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal death-row inmates. Biden did so. The press release described this as being "based on Attorney General Garland's personal opposition to the death penalty without consulting all the victims' families."
That number, 37 of 40, amounts to a near-total emptying of federal death row. It left only three inmates with active death sentences. Whatever one thinks of the policy merits, the scale of that action made it functionally equivalent to abolishing the federal death penalty by executive fiat, bypassing Congress entirely.
The current DOJ's response has been equally aggressive in the opposite direction. The 44 defendants now authorized for death penalty prosecution represent a rapid rebuilding of the federal capital caseload. Fox News reported that the department is also exploring measures to shorten federal habeas review in capital cases, the lengthy appellate process that often delays executions for years or decades after sentencing.
Adding firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation to the federal protocol is not just a symbolic escalation. It is a strategic move designed to insulate the federal execution process from the legal and logistical challenges that have plagued it.
Lethal injection has been the default federal method for decades, but it has faced persistent court challenges over whether specific drug protocols constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Pharmaceutical companies have also restricted sales of execution drugs, sometimes under pressure from activist campaigns. By authorizing multiple methods, the DOJ ensures that a successful legal challenge to one method does not shut down the entire system.
The Newsmax report noted the DOJ's own framing of the policy: "These steps are critical to deterring the most barbaric crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones." That language centers the policy on victims and deterrence, ground that death penalty opponents have long tried to cede.
The broader pattern at the Trump DOJ extends well beyond capital punishment. The department has reassigned attorneys and redirected resources across multiple divisions, signaling a wholesale reorientation of federal law enforcement priorities.
The DOJ press release did not identify which 44 defendants have been authorized for death penalty prosecution. It did not specify which federal facilities would house an expanded death row or where executions under the new methods would take place. It also did not detail the specific protocol language governing how a firing squad execution would be conducted at the federal level.
Those details matter. The legal challenges will come, and they will come quickly. Death penalty opponents will test every new method in court. The question is whether the DOJ has built a framework durable enough to withstand that litigation while maintaining the pace Blanche and the White House clearly want.
Blanche himself has been vocal about setting DOJ priorities since stepping into the acting role, and this announcement fits a pattern of decisive action on issues the prior administration left deliberately unresolved.
The debate over the federal death penalty is not really about firing squads or pentobarbital. It is about whether the federal government will enforce the laws Congress passed and the sentences juries imposed, or whether political appointees with personal objections get to quietly nullify both.
Under Biden and Garland, the answer was clear: personal opposition trumped statutory authority, career recommendations, and the wishes of victims' families. Forty death-row inmates were sentenced by juries. Thirty-seven had those sentences erased by one man's convictions.
The Trump DOJ is now moving to restore what was dismantled. Whether the courts allow it to proceed at the pace it wants remains to be seen. But the direction is unmistakable.
When the government refuses to carry out the sentences its own courts hand down, it does not signal compassion. It signals that the law is optional, and that the people who suffered most have no one left to speak for them.