The Justice Department announced Friday that it will reauthorize the use of pentobarbital for federal executions and permit firing squads as an additional method of carrying out capital punishment. This move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to revive and expedite the federal death penalty, which had seen a pause and partial rollback during the Biden administration.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche criticized the previous administration's approach, stating that the moratorium on executions and the halting of the pentobarbital protocol "inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself." The announcement follows policies first signaled by former President Donald Trump on his initial day in office, when he signed an executive order reinstating federal executions. Under Trump’s first term, 13 federal executions were carried out—more than under any president in recent history.

The Biden administration had introduced a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 and withdrew the use of pentobarbital due to concerns over potential pain and suffering from its administration. Biden also commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal inmates on death row in his final days. Currently, only three defendants remain on federal death row, while the Trump administration has authorized seeking the death penalty in 44 ongoing cases.

The Justice Department’s latest report calls on the Bureau of Prisons to explore relocating or expanding federal death row to a state that allows a broader range of execution methods. Federal executions have traditionally taken place in Indiana, a state that permits only lethal injection, but the report notes that states such as Mississippi allow execution by electrocution or firing squad if lethal injection is unavailable. The administration is also considering electrocution and lethal gas as additional methods, all of which the Supreme Court has deemed constitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The firing squad, rarely used historically in the United States, has seen renewed adoption by some states as difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs persist. Before recent cases, Utah was the only state to have carried out executions by firing squad in modern times, with three executions since 1977. More recently, South Carolina authorized the method and conducted three firing squad executions in 2025.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, condemned the administration’s stance, calling the move “a stain on our nation’s history” and criticising it for reinforcing what he described as a “cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

Alongside these measures, the administration is also working on regulations aimed at shortening the federal appeals process related to state death penalty cases. However, courts retain ultimate authority over executions and their procedures.