Washington (CNN) The administration's move to start executing prisoners on federal death row after a 16-year hiatus reverses a trend away from capital punishment in the US and tees up yet another divide between President Donald Trump and Democrats, who are nearly united in opposition.

Trump has been a public advocate of the death penalty for decades. And his embrace of the rhetoric of criminal justice reformers hasn't softened his view on putting prisoners to death.

He took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the state to reinstate its death penalty when five black and Latino teenagers were charged with raping a woman in Central Park in the 1990s. The teens were later exonerated in that crime and received settlements from the city. A recent Netflix documentary has brought the case back into the spotlight and drawn criticism of the prosecutor who oversaw the case.

"You have people on both sides of that," he said in June.