Project 2025 should be a wake-up call to the Biden administration on the death penalty.

A blueprint for a second Trump term issued by conservative groups contains many alarming wake-up calls for progressives. The section of “Mandate for Leadership” dedicated to laying out a program for the future Trump Justice Department locates the discussion of the federal death penalty in a broad but familiar context. It argues that a “disturbing number of state and local jurisdictions have enacted policies that directly undermine public safety leave doubt about whether criminals will be punished.” “Mandate for Leadership” acknowledges that “the prosecution of criminal offenses in most jurisdictions across the country must remain the responsibility of state and local governments,” but claims that “the federal government owes a special responsibility to Americans in jurisdictions where state and local prosecutors have abdicated this duty.” It suggests that the next administration should provide “greater attention and additional federal resources … to protect the rights of American citizens and federal interests.” It offers a variety of examples of such attention and additional resources—and that is where its death penalty recommendation comes in. That same year, Trump’s attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, sent a memo to all United States attorneys “strongly” encouraging them to seek the death penalty for people caught “dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs.” He claimed, echoing Trump, that doing so would “aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes our nation.” And, in the waning months of Trump’s presidency, his administration went on a killing spree, reviving long-dormant federal executions. He wrote that Milley’s phone call to reassure China after the storming of the Capitol was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” offers a way for Trump to turn his fantasies and fervor about the death penalty into a chilling plan of action.