This is, for HuffPost, simply unbelievable, a new low even for them.  The article headline claims there’s a GOP plan for an execution spree if Trump wins the election.  Turns out the “spree” will be directed only at the forty prisoners already on federal death row.

HuffPost says that in Donald Trump’s administration, during the last six months of his presidency, he had thirteen prisoners on federal death row executed, thus ending a seventeen-year de facto federal execution moratorium.  HuffPost didn’t bother to say Trump wasn’t bound by a federal execution moratorium.

A coalition of conservative groups known as Project 2025 released an 887-page document that outlines policy recommendations for each part of the federal government.  A recommendation to execute every prisoner remaining on federal death row is (according to HuffPost buried) on page 554.  Gene Hamilton, a former Trump DOJ and DHS official, author of the transition document’s Department of Justice section, wrote that the next administration should “do everything possible to obtain finality” for every prisoner on federal death row, which is currently forty people.  Every person on federal death row was convicted of crimes involving the death of a victim.

Is HuffPost trying to scare voters?  While technically not “out of context,” the headline certainly doesn’t convey the entire truth.  It tries to paint Trump as a monster with voters who read only an article’s headline.

Interestingly, shortly after Joe Biden was inaugurated, the Justice Department formally reinstated a moratorium on federal executions.  It seems, however, that there has been little progress toward a permanent federal execution moratorium goal despite Biden’s campaign promise to work to end the federal death penalty.  He has been noticeably silent on the issue.  Biden is “hoist with his own petard” because his DOJ is seeking the death penalty for Peyton Gendron, the Buffalo, N.Y. supermarket shooter.