Justice Department adds the firing squad to its menu of federal execution methods.

Hon. On Friday, the Acting Attorney General of the United States stood at a Justice Department lectern and announced that, going forward, the federal government’s permitted methods of execution would include lethal injection, the firing squad, electrocution, and the gas chamber.

I am going to say it slowly. Lethal injection. Firing squad. Electrocution. Gas chamber. In writing. As a federal protocol. In April. In 2026.

The federal government, in its history, has not used the firing squad. Some states have, in narrow circumstances, in living memory. Most have not. The shift, here, is from one category of execution to four, on the published theory that the previous menu was insufficient. The press release framed the announcement as a defense of crime victims, by a previous administration that, in the writers’ phrasing, failed in its duty.

I have served meatloaf to a lot of people who, on a hard week, will tell you that there are crimes for which they would, if the choice were theirs, push the button themselves. I am not, hon, dismissing that pain. The country has, fairly often, a debate about the death penalty. The debate is old. The debate has rules. The debate has not, in the modern era, included the question of whether the gas chamber is, on the merits, an option worth re-shelving.

The country, which is the same country that produced Cool Hand Luke and Dead Man Walking and the long body of post-conviction case law that suggests we have, over the decades, become a touch less enthusiastic about the public spectacle of the noose, the chair, and the squad, is now in the position of having a federal government that lists the squad alongside the chair, on a website, with a deck of links.

The press release does not include a justification for the gas chamber, specifically. It does not need to. The protocol is final-rule. The protocol is a matter of agency discretion. The protocol is what the country looks like in April 2026, on a Friday, at one p.m., with a press release.

That ought to concern you.