Trump Administration Approves Firing Squad for Death Penalty Executions

The Trump administration announced on Friday, April 24, 2026, that it would permit the use of firing squads, electrocution, and lethal gas as methods of federal execution, marking a significant escalation in its effort to revive and expand the federal death penalty. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a statement alongside a 52-page report from the Justice Department, reauthorizing the use of pentobarbital — a sedative drug previously used in lethal injections — and outlining a sweeping new regulatory and legislative agenda intended to accelerate capital punishment across the federal system. The report also reflects a February 5, 2025, memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had already moved to lift the prior administration’s moratorium on executions.

Reversing Biden-Era Policies

Acting Attorney General Blanche’s statement charged that decisions made by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back capital punishment had “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself.” The Biden administration had placed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 under then-Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who also halted the lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, citing what the Justice Department at the time described as “significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection causes unnecessary pain and suffering.” Weeks before leaving office, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers then on federal death row, acting on December 23, 2024.

The current administration’s posture represents a deliberate reversal of those moves. President Trump had signaled his intentions on his first day in office, signing an executive order to reinstitute capital punishment in the federal prison system. During Trump’s first term, 13 people were executed on federal death row — the most federal executions carried out in a single presidential term in decades.

Congressional and Advocacy Criticism

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, was among the first to publicly condemn the announcement. Durbin called the moves “a stain on our nation’s history” and accused the Justice Department of “turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of the federal death penalty — a cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

Robin M. Maher, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan research organization, offered a critical assessment of the report’s framing, saying it appeared more focused on grievances with the Biden administration than on providing a straightforward analysis of lethal injection protocol. “It struck me as rather disingenuous in terms of reflecting the reality of the problems” with the use of pentobarbital in executions, Maher said.

Practical and Legal Hurdles

The administration faces a significant structural constraint under federal law. Under the current statutory framework, the method of federal execution is tied to the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed; where a state does not have the death penalty, the sentencing court designates another state to carry out the execution. For years, federal executions have taken place in Indiana, which limits capital punishment to lethal injection — constraining the range of methods the federal government may currently employ.

The administration’s 52-page report acknowledges this limitation and recommends that the Bureau of Prisons submit a plan “detailing the options to relocate or expand federal death row, or to construct a second federal execution facility in a state that permits additional manners of execution.” While the report notes that Mississippi is among states that allow executions by electrocution and, if other methods are unavailable, by firing squad, it does not identify any specific state as the designated site for a future facility. Whether such a facility could be built, funded, and legally established remains an open question that will ultimately be resolved by the courts.

The administration also announced it was working on a regulation intended to cut years off the federal appeals process for state death penalty cases, though legal experts have consistently noted that the judiciary retains final authority over such timelines. Additionally, the department said it planned to issue a regulation imposing new limits on the ability of inmates sentenced to death to seek clemency or pardons from the federal government.

A History of Federal Execution Policy

Expanding Eligibility for the Death Penalty

Beyond execution methods, the report suggests broadening the categories of crimes and offenders eligible for federal capital punishment in order to, as the report states, “correct gaps and deficiencies” in current law. Any such expansion would require an act of Congress. The administration recommends legislation that would make eligible for the death penalty “murders of law enforcement officers; murders by aliens illegally in the United States; and murders constituted or committed in the commission of hate crimes, stalking, material support, or domestic violence.”

Pentobarbital’s Contested History

Much of the 52-page report centers on creating a new legal and regulatory framework to ensure the continued availability of pentobarbital. The drug was first used in an execution in Oklahoma in 2010 and rapidly became the most widely used lethal injection drug in the United States. It has faced sustained legal challenges from prisoners and their attorneys, who have argued that it causes unconstitutional suffering; however, courts have consistently allowed its use, and several states continue to rely on it as their primary execution method.

Availability has proved a separate problem. Pressure from medical and advocacy organizations on pharmaceutical manufacturers has made it difficult for some states to procure the drug. The administration’s report frames the reauthorization of pentobarbital as a necessary corrective to what it characterizes as an ideologically driven moratorium — a framing that critics like Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center dispute.

States at the Center of the Debate

Federal Executions by Presidential Term

The Trump administration’s April 24 announcement represents the most sweeping federal death penalty expansion in decades, touching on execution methods, drug protocols, appeals procedures, eligibility standards, and the physical infrastructure of capital punishment itself. Whether the courts will ultimately permit each of these changes — and whether Congress will act on the legislative recommendations — remains to be seen. What is clear is that the debate over capital punishment in the United States, far from receding, has entered a new and consequential chapter, with sharp disagreements about justice, cruelty, and the limits of state power once again at the center of American political life.