Donald Trump has been forthright about his intention to bring about a death-penalty renaissance, and now his efforts are coming to fruition. This year has been a particularly lethal one for America’s death-row prisoners. Together, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have executed a total of 40 people in the past 10 months by injection, nitrogen hypoxia, and firing squad, surpassing 2024’s total of 25—a significant spike in an otherwise-downward long-term trend. Trump’s return to power—and the Republican Party’s resurgence more generally—is driving a heavy push for more death sentences and more executions. He has restored the federal death penalty following the prior administration’s moratorium, and Republican state legislatures have sought to expand the list of crimes punishable by death and to allow new execution methods.

Capital punishment is central to Trump’s authoritarian approach to criminal justice. His pro–death penalty views emerged decades before he ascended to the presidency. In 1989, he bought full-page advertisements in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York Newsday calling for the alleged perpetrators of a gang rape in Central Park to be sentenced to death. In the text of his ad, Trump blasted Ed Koch, the New York City mayor at the time, for being soft on crime, both spiritually and practically. “Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts,” Trump wrote.