Donald Trump is promising that if he is reelected in November, he will execute every one of the 42 men on federal death row. The declaration is included in an 877-page document released by the Trump campaign, “Project 2025,” laying out all the monstrous plans the administration will unleash if he is not defeated. On page 554 is a paragraph promising to “do everything possible to obtain finality for the 42 prisoners currently on federal death row.” The plan is particularly chilling because Trump and his AG, William Barr, were responsible for a killing spree on federal death row in 2021 that left 12 men and one woman dead in the last six months Trump was in office. Those 13 executions occurred after a 17-year hiatus at the federal level, and before that mass killing, the federal government had executed only three people since 1963.
The manifesto also promises to expand the death penalty beyond capital murder to include “crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children,” even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) that “the Eighth Amendment categorically rules out the death penalty in even the most extreme cases of child rape” when “the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in death of the victim” because it violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause.
Of the 42 men currently on federal death row, 38% are Black, compared with 14% of the U.S. population. Seven of the 13 people killed by the federal government in 2021 were people of color.
