by Austin Sarat | Apr 28, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
After the Justice Department released a report Friday to “Restore and Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty,” the national and international public rightly focused on the DOJ’s recommendation to bring back the firing squad as an execution method. The firing squad is a particularly brutal way to put someone to death. Unlike lethal injection, which seeks to mask the horror it inflicts on the executed, the firing squad turns execution into a spectacle of cruelty for those who witness it.
The firing squad is a particularly brutal way to put someone to death.
But the first mention of a firing squad appears on page 30 of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s 52-page document. The parts of the report that precede and follow the first mention of that execution method are even more troubling. There, we find the DOJ whitewashing the racism and arbitrariness that have long characterized the federal death penalty and laying out a plan to dramatically curtail the rights of people held on death row.
As much as death penalty opponents are right to call out Blanche and the DOJ for embracing the barbarity of the firing squad, they need to also highlight the department’s seeming eagerness to kill people, its dismissal of evidence that the death penalty is unfairly applied and its complete disdain for the previous administration’s capital punishment record.
Indeed, the report is mostly a political hit job on former President Joe Biden from a White House that remains fixated on trying to discredit him and his administration. While seeking to revive federal executions, it devotes page after page to attacking the former president and former Attorney General Merrick
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Of all the White House allies who have received lucrative settlements from the Trump Justice Department in response to highly dubious civil lawsuits, the DOJ’s deal with former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is among the most outrageous.
It also apparently has a sequel. Lawfare’s Anna Bower reported:
The Trump administration has agreed to a second settlement with former national security adviser and Trump ally Michael Flynn, according to a court document filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
The settlement relates to a civil suit Flynn brought against the United States government, in which he alleges that the U.S. Army illegally garnished his retirement pay.
It’s not yet clear exactly how much this second settlement will be worth. The latest court documents, filed Friday, said the two sides “have agreed to a settlement in principle,” though they’ll “need more time to finalize and implement the agreed-upon settlement.”
These developments come on the heels of an earlier settlement agreement that was worth $1.25 million, and the fact Flynn is walking away with any taxpayer money at all is awfully tough to defend under the circumstances.
Indeed, in the recent past, the very idea of payouts to Flynn were difficult to imagine.
After Flynn was first charged by federal prosecutors — accused of lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian government, lying to investigators about being a paid foreign agent and acting illegally as an unregistered foreign agent while working on Trump’s 2016 campaign — he admitted he lied, pleaded guilty twice in open court and became a cooperating witness with then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Flynn later changed lawyers, however, at which point
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Maddowblog, Media, News, Politics
Under the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has tried more than once to impose restrictions on the free press, and so far, those efforts have failed in court. There’s one news outlet, however, where the Defense Department has had more success. The New York Times reported:
In a blow to independent coverage of the military, the Pentagon has fired the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that covers the U.S. armed forces and is partly funded by the Defense Department.
‘Apparently the Pentagon also doesn’t want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes,’ the ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, wrote in a Stars and Stripes column published on Thursday.
As has been the case with many recent Pentagon firings, Smith added that she was given no reason for her dismissal.
It’s important to emphasize that the role of ombudsman at Stars and Stripes was created by Congress for a reason: The person in this job is specifically tasked with ensuring the newspaper’s editorial independence.
Hegseth’s Pentagon fired her anyway, not because Smith failed to do her job, but because she did her job in ways the Republican administration found inconvenient.
As many service members and veterans likely know, Stars and Stripes is a military newspaper with a generations-old pedigree. It has long described itself as the “U.S. military’s independent news source.”
The word “independent” was — and remains — key. As it covers the military, Stars and Stripes has long enjoyed the same kind of editorial freedom that civilian newspapers have, even if that means publishing reports the Pentagon doesn’t always like.
To ensure it publishes only
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
During Joe Biden’s presidency, the Democratic administration took steps to end federal executions, including a measure that converted 37 death row inmates’ sentences to life in prison. Donald Trump vowed to reverse course and use federal powers to kill more people. To that end, the Republican president and his team have authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
But as important as these developments are, it’s also notable how, exactly, Team Trump is prepared to proceed with these executions. The Associated Press reported:
The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday. […]
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The policy shift was announced in a statement from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose document spent a fair amount of time denouncing Biden as part of the Republican lawyer’s latest apparent attempt to make Trump happy.
It’s worth emphasizing that Trump’s Justice Department hasn’t explicitly said that it will start killing people with firing squads, but now this option is on the table as part of a new, streamlined process in which the administration intends to expedite death penalty cases.
Time will tell what becomes of the shift and whether there are related Eighth Amendment court fights, but the developments reminded me of something Rachel Maddow told viewers back in 2014, when Republican policymakers advanced similar measures at the state level.
“Over time, we’ve
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics, Russia, Russia-Ukraine Crisis
There were some hopes that U.S. and Iranian officials would try to advance the diplomatic process over the weekend, but neither country sent a delegation to Islamabad. This leaves an uncertain dynamic in which the hot war is paused, but hardly any meaningful efforts are underway to work toward a resolution.
Iran’s foreign minister is expected to travel to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin on Monday, and the conversation is likely to be of interest to the White House. With this in mind, Trump spoke to Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on Sunday morning for a live telephone interview, and the host asked whether he’d spoken with the Russian leader recently. “I have,” the president replied.
As the exchange continued, Heinrich added, “What was the last conversation you had with Putin?”
HEINRICH: You referenced Ukraine. Have you spoken with President Putin at all recently?TRUMP: I have. We’re trying to get something done. I settled eight wars.HEINRICH: What was the last conversation you had with Putin?TRUMP: I don’t want to reveal that.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-26T15:37:30.085Z
“Well, I don’t want to reveal that,” Trump replied, failing to explain why he believes their conversation needed to be kept secret.
Let’s not forget that the White House routinely discloses interactions between the president and world leaders, and Trump frequently uses his social media platform to boast about his conversations with foreign heads of state, including recent talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
But asked about his latest chat with Putin, Trump doesn’t want to “reveal” that, for reasons he also doesn’t feel the need to share.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because
by Steve Benen | Apr 27, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
In the aftermath of the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where an armed gunman attempting to breach the event, Donald Trump spent an amazing amount of time focused on one of his top priorities: The president invested a new round of time and energy into lobbying in support of the ballroom project he’s been obsessing over for months.
The day after the shooting, Trump sat down with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, for an interview that aired on Sunday night’s “60 Minutes,” in which he continued down the same path — “I’m building a safe ballroom,” he boasted — before the conversation shifted to another one of the Republican’s domestic priorities.
Trump: “The reason you have people like that is you have people doing ‘no kings.’ I’m not a king. If I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-26T23:22:09.694Z
Referring to the alleged shooter, the president argued, “Well, see, the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings.” In other words, as Trump sees it, Americans gathering peacefully in communities nationwide to denounce his abuses necessarily creates conditions for political violence.
That’s plainly absurd, but more importantly, it reflects Trump’s apparent belief that the proper response to an incident such as the one the world saw on Saturday night is to take steps to stifle dissent — again.
As part of the same exchange, the president quickly made the transition from condemning No Kings protests to condemning the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization Trump’s Justice Department began prosecuting last week, which the president seized on as part of a
