A blueprint for a second Trump term issued by conservative groups contains many alarming wake-up calls for progressives. One that may have been overlooked is the ambitious plan to revive and expand the federal death penalty—and it highlights why Biden must act now to prevent a bloodbath for people condemned to death.
The report by Project 2025, titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” offers a detailed set of policy goals and recommendations for Trump, should he return to the Oval Office. As the AP puts it, “Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return.” Behind the scenes, leaders of Project 2025 are collaborating with the Trump campaign and plotting a rapid-fire post-inauguration rollout of a right-wing agenda.
Given its membership, it should not come as a surprise that the Project 2025 agenda includes ambitious plans to revive and expand the federal death penalty. But it still should serve as yet another wake-up call for progressives as to why they cannot afford to sit on their hands during the 2024 presidential campaign, and to the Biden administration as to why they should stop temporizing about capital punishment.
The section of “Mandate for Leadership” dedicated to laying out a program for the future Trump Justice Department locates the discussion of the federal death penalty in a broad but familiar context. It argues that a “disturbing number of state and local jurisdictions
have enacted policies that directly undermine public safety [and] leave doubt about
whether criminals will be punished.”
“Mandate for Leadership” acknowledges that “the prosecution of criminal offenses in most jurisdictions across the country must remain the responsibility of state and local governments,” but claims that “the federal government owes a special responsibility to Americans in jurisdictions where state and local prosecutors have abdicated this duty.” It suggests that the next........