Trump Allies Have a Horror Movie Plan to Clear Out Death Row Prisoners

If Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, Republicans and conservatives want criminals to die—literally. 

Project 2025, a coalition of conservatives and Republicans, released a document last year laying out their policy wish list for all of the government, Hidden deep within the playbook on page 554 is a plan to execute every inmate on federal death row—and add more criminals to it with the help of the Supreme Court, HuffPost reported Friday. 

Right now, there’s a federal moratorium on executions that was restored shortly after Biden’s election. The Trump administration had ended it in 2019 with the first federal execution in nearly 13 years and the tacit approval of the Supreme Court. The federal government would execute 13 inmates before Trump’s term ended, the most in a single year since 1896. Now, it seems the rest of the GOP plans to pick up where the Trump administration left off. 

The next administration should “do everything possible to obtain finality” for every prisoner on federal death row, which currently includes 40 people, says the plan, written by Gene Hamilton,  a former official in Trump’s Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

“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,” Hamilton continues, writing in a footnote that this could require a new Supreme Court ruling, “but the [Justice Department] should place a priority on doing so.”

It’s unclear if Trump will strictly abide by this conservative playbook. The fact that he has trouble articulating his plans coherently suggests that it’ll be up to the people he surrounds himself with. If he appoints cabinet members who are longtime Republican operatives, or even hard-right advisors such as Stephen Miller, it seems likely.