Trump DOJ Announces It Will Start Executing People by Firing Squad

The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will resurrect federal firing squads as part of an effort to implement Donald Trump’s day-one executive order to revamp capital punishment.

Trump’s order, signed in January 2025, demanded the attorney general pursue the death penalty on “all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including murder of a law enforcement officer or any capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.

Under former President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland had paused federal executions. Trump became furious when, before leaving the White House, Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 prisoners to life without parole.* The Republican kicked off his second term in office with a bloodthirsty decree for more death.

The January order made no mention of firing squads. Still, the DOJ said in its Friday announcement it had directed the Bureau of Prisons to “expand the execution protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad.”

Some view firing squads as more humane than lethal injection, which do not have a 100 percent success rate and sometimes require multiple doses. However, execution by firing squad can also result in prisoners slowly bleeding to death if they are not immediately killed by the bullet.

In March 2025, the Supreme Court allowed South Carolina to carry out the country’s first execution by firing squad in 15 years. Since 1608, at least 144 prisoners have been executed by firing squads in America, most of them in Utah, according to the Associated Press. Firing squads have not gained much traction outside of Utah because they are considered to be barbaric. Currently only five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances.

* This article previously misstated Biden’s order regarding 37 prisoners on death row.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban immigrants from claiming asylum at the southern border was blocked in a federal court Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2–1 that Trump could not deport immigrants “under summary removal procedures of his own making” or suspend their rights to apply for asylum, even if they cross the border illegally.

Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, and J. Michelle Childs, appointed by Biden, ruled against Trump, while Trump appointee Justin Walker ruled in the administration’s favor. The three-judge panel upheld a ruling from U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in July, who said that Trump’s January 2025 executive order ending asylum claims for those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border went against federal law.

“Barring foreign individuals who are physically present in the United States from applying for asylum and, if they make the statutory showing that they are eligible, from being considered to receive it cannot be squared with the statute,” Childs wrote in her ruling.

Last year, Trump adviser Stephen Miller railed against the lower court’s similar conclusion, calling Moss a “marxist judge” attempting to “circumvent the Supreme Court,” which is where the case is likely headed next. Asylum claims have plummeted under Trump, who has fired immigration judges and pushed mass deportations despite multiple defeats in court.

Donald Trump made significant gains with young voters, particularly young men, across the country in the 2024 election. But less than two years into his term, the MAGA leader has completely lost them.*

An NBC News Decision Desk poll published Friday reveals a stark reversal in Gen Z’s opinion of the president, indicating that just 24 percent approve of Trump’s performance, while 76 percent disapprove.

The nosedive is in no small part due to the war with Iran, and the subsequent cost of living crisis caused by sky-high fuel and oil costs. A collective 81 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they either somewhat or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran war, and 72 percent said that the U.S. should stop military operations in Iran altogether.

Some 48 percent of polled young Americans said that inflation and the rising cost of living were the most important economic matters to themselves and their families at the moment, an 8 percent increase compared to August 2025.

Meanwhile, roughly 80 percent of Gen Z respondents said that the U.S. is on the wrong track, the highest percentage of any age group polled, and nearly half (47 percent) of polled young adults said that they would choose to live in the past if they could. A minority of respondents appeared optimistic about the future: Just 10 percent said they’d choose to go less than 50 years into the future if the option was hypothetically available to them, and 5 percent said they would time-skip by more than 50 years.

Those polled said that their feelings about the future were informed by their relationship with technology and a “growing discomfort with being connected to the internet at all times,” reported NBC News. The current technological and geopolitical uncertainty has inspired a nostalgia for a less chaotic, less technologically dependent world.

The poll found that 62 percent of Gen Z respondents believed that life will be worse for them than for previous generations. Just 25 percent said that they thought that the quality of life would improve compared to the past, and 13 percent said it would remain the same.

* This article originally misstated the number of young Trump voters.

Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks that anyone celebrating the Trump administration ending its investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is “fooling themselves.”

On Friday, the Justice Department announced it would be dropping its targeted, flimsy investigation into Powell, who has been under threat of termination from President Trump for months due to his refusal to lower interest rates. But Warren doesn’t see the move as an admission of defeat—rather, as a brazen attempt to expedite the nomination of Powell’s replacement, Kevin Warsh, who is seen as much more favorable to the Trump administration. Just this week, Warsh avoided questions in a congressional hearing about his financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein and whether Trump spoke to him about lowering interest rates.

“This is just an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair,” Warren wrote in a statement on Friday. “Let’s be clear what the Justice Department announced today: they threatened to restart the bogus criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell at any time while failing to drop their ridiculous criminal probe against Governor Cook.”

The DOJ’s decision to end the investigation follows Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s refusal to confirm Warsh as the next Fed chair “until this legal matter is fully resolved.”

“Anyone who believes Donald Trump’s corrupt scheme to take over the Fed is over is fooling themselves,” Warren continued. “The Senate should not proceed with the nomination of Kevin Warsh.”

Insider trading is of no concern to the Trump administration.

Federal prosecutors have charged Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old active-duty Army soldier involved in the planning and capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, with using confidential intel to win $400,000 on Polymarket predictions related to the raid.

But Donald Trump practically shrugged off the illegal activity while speaking with reporters Thursday evening, suggesting to the room that there was no issue with making extra cash off of insider knowledge so long as the soldier was betting on the U.S. to win.

“Mr. President, apparently there was a special forces soldier involved in the capture of [Maduro] who was arrested by federal authorities today on suspicion of insider trading and betting on Polymarket,” stated a reporter. “Are you concerned that federal employees are betting on these reduction markets and potentially getting rich?”

“Well, I don’t know about it,” Trump said, taking a long pause. “Was he betting that they would get him or they wouldn’t get him?”

“It sounds like he was betting on his removal from office, that Maduro would be removed,” the reporter clarified.

“That’s interesting. That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team, it’s a little like Pete Rose,” Trump said, referring to the former Cincinnati Reds manager.

Rose was permanently blacklisted from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989 after he was caught betting on his team to win. Rose’s behavior also spurred the Hall of Fame’s board of directors’ eponymously titled 1991 baseball rule, barring anyone on the permanently ineligible list from running for election in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

“If he bet against his team, that would be no good,” Trump added, referring to Van Dyke.

In the same press conference, Trump lamented that “the whole world has become somewhat of a casino.”

“I was never very much in favor of it, I don’t like it conceptually,” said Trump, whose social media company Truth Social is in the midst of launching its own prediction platform, Truth Predict. “It is what it is.”

Van Dyke was arrested Thursday and faces up to 60 years in prison. In a statement posted on social media, Polymarket said that “insider trading has no place” in its betting services, and claimed it had appropriately coordinated with law enforcement and the Justice Department investigation to hold Van Dyke accountable.

Yet despite the clear parameters of the law prohibiting such activity, some corners of Washington are already divided on what justice looks like for the soldier. Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna has already asked Trump to pardon Van Dyke, claiming in a social media post that “unless the DOJ plans on going after all the crooks in Congress currently insider trading, this is simply skewed justice.”

“I don’t agree with what he did and he should be required to disgorge all the profits; however, unless the DOJ plans on doing Congress next, this is not justice,” she affirmed.