A defining feature of Donald Trump ’s final months as president was his oversight of the killings, authorized in quick succession at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, of 13 people on federal death row . It was without modern precedent. By comparison, the federal government had executed only three people in the more than five decades since the US ended, and then restarted, its reliance on capital punishment.

Picking up where he left off, Trump, on his first day back in office in January, ordered his soon-to-be-confirmed attorney general, Pam Bondi , to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.” Bondi’s subsequent marching orders to federal prosecutors included lifting the moratorium on capital punishment imposed by her predecessor, Merrick Garla

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