Trump administration wants to fast-track executions with electrocution, firing squads, lethal gas

The Trump administration wants to shorten the appeals process for people sentenced to death and add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as methods of execution, the Department of Justice announced in a report on Friday.

The report is the latest development in the Trump administration’s long campaign to execute as many people as possible. In the report, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche boasted of the execution spree President Donald Trump carried out during his first term. After a long de facto moratorium on federal executions, Trump oversaw 13 killings in his final six months before leaving office. In 2024, his successor, President Joe Biden, commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row during his final days in office, leaving Trump — who openly fantasized about carrying out another rash of executions — with a nearly empty federal death row.