Carry out federal executions and pursue the death penalty

Partially done

Printed page 554 17. Department of Justice

“Enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable. … The next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row. It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes—particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children—until Congress says otherwise through legislation.”

What has happened

Apr 24, 2026 Partially done
DOJ said it had rescinded the Garland moratorium on federal executions and authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants; it readopted the first-term pentobarbital execution protocol, added the firing squad as a manner of execution, and sent Congress a legislative proposal. No federal execution had been carried out yet.
- DOJ press release: The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty
  Primary Executive branch Apr 24, 2026
Sep 25, 2025 Attempted
Presidential memorandum directed the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney for D.C. to seek the death penalty in all appropriate District of Columbia cases and to pursue federal jurisdiction over death-eligible D.C. crimes.
- Enforcing the Death Penalty Laws in the District of Columbia to Deter and Punish the Most Heinous Crimes (presidential memorandum)
  Primary Executive branch Sep 25, 2025
Jan 20, 2025 Attempted
Executive Order 14164 directed the Attorney General to pursue the death penalty for all eligible crimes, to seek to overturn precedents limiting it, and to secure state-law death sentences for the 37 federal death-row prisoners whose sentences President Biden commuted; nothing had changed yet.
- Executive Order 14164 — Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety
  Primary Executive branch Jan 20, 2025
- Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety (Executive Order 14164)
  Primary Executive branch Jan 20, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The Attorney General’s 2025-02-05 memorandum lifting the Garland execution moratorium is referenced in the 2026-04-24 DOJ release and in CRS LSB11276 (“Federal Capital Punishment: Recent Executive Action”, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11276 — the page refused to open for us), but we did not find the memo’s own justice.gov address; it is a lead. The PDF at justice.gov/ag/media/1388546/dl that search results attach to it is the same-day cartels memorandum, not the death-penalty memo.
The 2026-04-24 report “Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty” (https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1437806/dl) downloaded, but we could not extract its text; the press release is the Evidence.
No allowlisted source records a federal execution since 2025-01-20; the release itself frames the protocol changes as “clearing the way” for executions. If one is carried out, it will be recorded as done, dated to the execution.

Action: restore
Object: federal death penalty
ID: 1544