During a Wednesday debate, Massachusetts Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley warned that if former US President Donald Trump claims the presidency for another five years, his DOJ will “go on a murdering spree.”.
Pressley, a part of the “Squad,” recently criticized a Republican project called Project 2025 because of its stance on capital punishment, stating that it was “a means to an end.” Pressley has been one of the fiercest opponents of the practice and reaffirmed her stance today, stating that it might result in more government-sponsored murders.
“The Department of Justice would go on a murdering spree,” Pressley stated at the hearing.
“It would rush to use the death penalty and expand its use to even more people, while circumventing due process protections,” she continued.
What is Project 2025?
Project 2025, a policy proposal crafted by the conservative Heritage Foundation, aims to reshape the federal government to align with the agenda of a future Republican president.
The project is perceived as a blueprint for Trump’s potential return to power. It advocates for the “centralize executive power, slash budgets across various agencies, and oust seasoned civil servants” with the president’s loyalists. An executive order known as “Schedule F” would facilitate this.
Pressley asked to recognise the true intentions behind Schedule F, which she believes is a tool for far-right extremists to implement “widespread wholesale policy violence.”
“One thing I know for sure about Trump and his sycophants is that they telegraph their harm.”
Project 2025 is a ‘far-right manifesto’: Pressley
The congresswoman also sought to “sound the alarm” on Project 2025, describing it as a “far-right manifesto” and a “1,000-page bucket list of extremist policies” that could disrupt the functioning of government agencies and impact the lives of American citizens.
The manifesto of Project 2025 calls for “the next conservative Administration” to carry out the death penalty for the 44 inmates currently on federal death row.
Since the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988, only 16 individuals have been executed, with Trump’s administration responsible for 13 of these during his term.
Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, dismissed her claims as “ridiculous language” and labeled her an “unserious” person.
The former president said they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”
Earlier, Trump slammed The Squad on X, writing, “They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!”