BREAKING NEWS: Trump Slams Biden’s Decision to Commute 37 Murderers’ Sentences as ‘Makes No Sense’.giang

President-elect Donald Trump is doubling down on the death penalty after President Biden announced he would commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 individuals currently on federal death row.

On Tuesday, Trump vowed to direct his Department of Justice (DOJ) to pursue the death penalty. “As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump said on Truth Social. “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”

It comes says after Biden said he would commute the sentences of 37 death row inmates, transforming their punishment to life imprisonment. Among those spared were individuals convicted of murdering police and military officers, those killed during bank robberies and drug deals, or those murdered on federal land.

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Trump has been a vocal advocate for expanding capital punishment. Trump has said during his 2024 presidential campaign that he is in favor of seeking the death penalty for lesser offenses including for drug traffickers.

His team criticized the president’s decision “These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said. “President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House after he was elected with a massive mandate from the American people,” Cheung added.

Following Biden’s significant action, only three federal inmates still face execution. These include Dylann Roof, a racist church killer who massacred nine Black congregants in South Carolina in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

All three will still face lethal injection. White supremacist Dylann Roof was convicted in 2015 for a racially motivated attack that killed nine black worshippers in a South Carolina church.

Roof was found guilty of federal hate crimes and now faces the death sentence. The 22-year-old was also convicted of obstructing the exercise of religion for those he shot after joining them in a Bible study, reports the Mirror. In another dreadful episode, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was handed the death sentence for orchestrating a terrorist assault that tragically took three lives and wounded 264 bystanders on April 15, 2013.

Meanwhile, Robert Bowers’s conviction followed his hate-driven rampage at the Tree of Life Synagogue, where in October 2018, he yelled “all Jews must die! ” before unloading his weapon on worshippers gathered for a baby naming ceremony on the Sabbath in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill. His anti-Semitic rants had polluted online spaces before he took the lives of 11 people.

President Biden, targeting violence and advocating a just legal system, said: “I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system.”

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” he said in his announcement.