Donald Trump’s executive order, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” is not about justice. It is not about safety. It is about vengeance, political grandstanding, and the unchecked brutality of state power. It is a desperate attempt to revive a cruel, outdated, and deeply flawed system that has failed time and time again to deliver true justice.

This order reeks of authoritarian cruelty. Trump frames capital punishment as some noble instrument of justice, a deterrent that protects Americans. But the truth is it does neither. The death penalty has been proven ineffective as a deterrent. It has been proven to be applied unjustly, disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities. And worst of all, it has been proven to execute innocent people.

Let’s be clear: Trump is reviving the death penalty not because it works but because it is politically expedient. It feeds his bloodthirsty base’s desire for “tough on crime” policies despite overwhelming evidence that these policies do nothing to reduce crime rates. This is not about making communities safer—it is about turning executions into a spectacle, a twisted display of state power used for political gain.

And let’s not ignore the absolute gall of his attack on judges and elected officials who have worked to end the death penalty. He claims they “defy the law” when they argue against capital punishment, but in reality, they are upholding the highest values of justice. They recognize what Trump refuses to admit: the death penalty is deeply flawed, prone to error, and fundamentally immoral. He wants to crush those who stand for reform, silencing the legal progress that has saved countless innocent lives from wrongful execution.

Trump’s order is particularly grotesque in its politicization of crime and punishment. It specifically targets undocumented immigrants and law enforcement killings—a clear dog whistle to his base, an effort to stoke xenophobic fear and justify the death penalty as some kind of righteous tool of “law and order.” It does nothing to address actual root causes of crime, such as poverty, systemic inequality, and lack of access to mental health services. Instead, it weaponizes execution as a show of force, as if state-sponsored killing will solve deeper societal problems.

And then there’s the horrifying idea that Trump wants to expand executions by forcing states to acquire lethal injection drugs. These drugs have been at the center of botched, inhumane executions, where prisoners have writhed in agony because the government could not even kill them "properly." Pharmaceutical companies have refused to provide execution drugs for ethical reasons, but Trump’s solution? Force them into compliance. In other words, if the cruelty isn’t the point, why is he going to such great lengths to keep it alive?

Even worse, this order openly calls for overturning Supreme Court precedents that limit the government’s ability to impose the death penalty. This is a blatant attempt to rig the judiciary in favor of state-sanctioned murder, ensuring that future legal challenges to capital punishment are crushed under a conservative judicial boot. It is nothing short of judicial authoritarianism.

This executive order does not “restore” anything—it regresses. It drags the country back into the past, into an era of state brutality, irreversible mistakes, and a government that values revenge over justice. It is an order written by a man obsessed with power, unbothered by facts, and completely devoid of human empathy.

This is not justice. This is barbarism disguised as governance. It must be challenged, resisted, and ultimately abolished.