The Justice Department on Friday added firing squads to the federal government's execution protocol and reauthorized single-drug lethal injection with pentobarbital, the broadest expansion of federal execution methods in decades and the clearest sign the Trump administration intends to resume executions at scale.

The changes, announced in a department press release and an accompanying report, hand federal prosecutors a wider menu of execution methods at a moment when only three inmates remain on federal death row but the administration has authorized seeking death sentences against 44 more defendants. They also reverse two Biden-era decisions: a moratorium on federal executions imposed in 2021 and Attorney General Merrick Garland's last-days withdrawal of the pentobarbital injection policy.

What changed

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on three measures, according to the department. The first readopts the single-drug pentobarbital protocol used to carry out 13 executions during President Trump's first term, more than under any modern president. The second expands the federal protocol to include additional methods such as firing squad. The third, the department said, streamlines internal procedures for capital cases.

"Among the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases," the Justice Department said in its release, according to CBS News.

The federal government has not previously listed firing squad among its execution methods, the Death Penalty Information Center told NPR. Five states do: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. A 2020 rule signed by then-Attorney General William Barr already permits federal executions by lethal injection or by "any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed."

The Biden reversal

Garland pulled pentobarbital from the federal protocol in January after a government review found "significant uncertainty" about whether the drug causes unnecessary pain and suffering. President Biden then commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences to life without parole, leaving only Dylann Roof, the gunman in the 2015 Charleston church massacre; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.

The Trump administration's report Friday rejected that medical finding outright, saying the prior review "got the standard and the science wrong" and accusing the Biden Justice Department of causing "untold harm to the public" through steps to "weaken, delay and dismantle the death penalty." The department said pentobarbital injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment.

The pipeline

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi lifted the Biden moratorium in February 2025 and ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty in qualifying cases, including against Luigi Mangione, accused in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson. A federal judge in New York dismissed the firearms charges that would have made Mangione death-eligible in January.

After Bondi was ousted, Blanche, elevated from deputy attorney general, authorized California's top federal prosecutor to seek death against three alleged MS-13 members charged with killing a cooperating witness. On Trump's first day in office, the president signed an executive order directing the death penalty be sought "for all crimes of a severity demanding its use," with police murders singled out.

Counterpoint

Friday's coverage available here comes entirely from lean-left outlets, NPR and CBS News. The administration's case is presented through those outlets' quotation of Blanche and the department report rather than through independent conservative reporting. "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," Blanche said in the statement carried by both outlets, arguing the new protocol is "critical to deterring the most barbaric crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones." The department's Friday materials did not directly rebut the medical findings Garland cited beyond asserting the earlier review erred.

The department did not name a date for the next federal execution or identify which method would be used first.