I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, January 18th.

In just a minute, my very special guest, New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman,

who, as many of you know at age 75,

and as a lung cancer survivor, got COVID last week after having to shelter in place during the

insurrection with Republican colleagues who refused to wear masks. I know you all want to know

how the Congresswoman is doing and her thoughts on moving the country forward.

But before Bunny Watson Coleman comes on, I want to share with you something that she tweeted about

this weekend that I think isn't getting nearly the attention it deserves because of the intensity of all the

other news. Donald Trump has become the first president since Grover, Cleveland,

to carry out an execution during a transition to a new administration. In fact, by the Washington

Post's count, the number of federal death sentences carried out under Trump since 2020, just since last year,

is more than in the previous 56 years combined.

And I'd like to read for you just a few lines from an op-ed that Martin Luther King, the third, Dr. King's son, published in the Washington Post last week.

The headline is Martin Luther King, Jr. aboard the death

penalty executing black men on his birthday would dishonor him. And he writes, in 1957, my father,

the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was asked whether God approves of the death penalty for certain crimes.

He responded, quote, I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime.

Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and above all,

against the highest expression of love in the nature of God."

Unquote, that quote from Dr. Martin Luther King.

Then his son continues, after a 17-year hiatus of federal executions,

the Trump administration carried out a shocking 11 executions in the past seven months and scheduled two more for the

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