The Trump administration announced Friday that the federal government will expand the methods it uses to carry out executions, adding firing squads, electrocution, and nitrogen gas asphyxiation to the existing lethal injection protocol. The announcement came through a Justice Department report that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche released alongside authorization to pursue death sentences in nine new cases.
The move follows President Trump’s decision to lift the moratorium on federal executions that former President Joe Biden had put in place, and it signals that the administration intends to move faster and more broadly on capital punishment than it did during Trump’s first term.
Why the federal executions protocol needed expanding
The practical reasoning behind adding new methods centers on a supply problem. Pharmaceutical companies have increasingly refused to sell the drugs required for lethal injections to prison systems, a shift driven in part by European Union regulations that restrict the export of certain substances for use in executions. That has pushed American prison systems toward compounding pharmacies, smaller operations that produce copies of the drugs outside the standard regulatory framework.
That workaround has created both logistical complications and legal exposure. By authorizing additional methods, the Justice Department is positioning itself to carry out executions even if the drug supply chain breaks down entirely.
The department directed the Bureau of Prisons to update its protocol to include methods authorized under existing state law. Firing squads and electrocution both have long precedents in American execution history. Nitrogen gas asphyxiation is newer. Alabama first used the method in 2024, making it the most recent addition to the execution toolkit in the United States.
Lethal injection remains the most commonly used method across the country, but it has faced sustained legal challenges. Autopsy findings in some cases have suggested that condemned prisoners experienced symptoms consistent with drowning before losing consciousness, which opponents argue raises constitutional questions under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. No execution method has ever been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Who is currently on federal death row
Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row before leaving office, leaving three men awaiting execution. None of the three have received execution dates.
The first is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in 2015 for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing. The second is Dylann Roof, convicted in 2017 for the racially motivated murders of nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The third is Robert Bowers, convicted in 2023 for killing 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Each of the three retains the right to challenge the execution protocol on constitutional grounds before any sentence is carried out. Such challenges have historically extended the time between sentencing and execution by years, sometimes by decades. The administration has said it intends to reduce those delays, though the legal pathways available to condemned prisoners are established and not easily closed.
How executions are shifting at the state level
The federal expansion mirrors movement already underway in several states. Five states currently permit execution by firing squad. Idaho is set to make it the primary method beginning in July. Last year, a South Carolina man convicted of a double murder became the fourth person executed by firing squad in the United States since the 1970s.
Nitrogen gas asphyxiation has spread quickly since Alabama introduced it. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have all adopted the method since 2024.
What the administration is building toward
Trump’s first term ended with 13 federal executions carried out by lethal injection in its final months, resuming federal capital punishment after a roughly 20-year pause. The current administration has indicated it plans to pursue executions more aggressively, both in volume and in pace.
With three people currently on federal death row and nine new cases now being pursued, the infrastructure behind federal capital punishment is being rebuilt in a deliberate and accelerating way. Whether the courts move at the same speed remains an open question.
