One day after US President Joe Biden eased the death penalty for 37 convicts, President-elect Donald Trump reaffirmed a campaign promise and said he will seek to expand the application of the maximum punishment in the country.
“As soon as I take office, I will direct the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from rapists, murderers and violent monsters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Republican thus seeks to completely dissociate himself from the Democratic government’s line of action. During Biden’s entire term, there was a single authorization from the Justice Department to pursue the death penalty in a new case. It was that of young Payton Gendron, who killed ten black people in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in 2022.
On Monday, the day before Christmas, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 inmates on death row to life in prison. He said he could not allow a new government to resume executions of people he had spared for the past four years. Trump, on the other hand, classified those spared as “37 of the worst killers in our country”.