In addition to restoring its credibility as a human rights leader abroad, the United States must expand human rights protection at home.  The next president should:

• Abolish the federal death penalty, and pending abolition, declare an immediate moratorium on federal executions, and direct the attorney general not to seek the death penalty in federal prosecutions. 
• Encourage Congress to amend US law requiring the immediate deportation of any immigrant with a criminal conviction by restoring individualized deportation hearings in which an immigration judge can weigh the offense’s seriousness against the harm caused by deportation.
• Address the stark and persistent racial disparities plaguing the US criminal justice system, such as by reforming federal sentencing laws to eliminate the powder/crack cocaine sentencing differential, and convening a presidential commission to recommend steps to end such disparities.
• Work to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by urging Congress to enact comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
• End benighted and ineffective approaches to the fight against HIV/AIDS by eliminating the anti-prostitution pledge and the emphasis on abstinence-only programs, and have the Department of Health and Human Services remove HIV from the list of communicable diseases of public health significance in order to end the ban on entry to the United States of persons living with HIV.
• Promote respect for reproductive freedom, including by rescinding the “global gag rule,” which prohibits family planning organizations abroad from receiving US funds if using their own funds for legal abortion-related activities; submitting a budget with funding for comprehensive sex education in place of abstinence-until-marriage programs, and removing funding for crisis pregnancy centers that do not provide full and accurate information about pregnancy options.
• Eliminate statutory and regulatory barriers to federal funding for needle and syringe exchange in domestic and international settings.