No it’s always been illegal. What the new law does is not make lynching illegal, it allows a very wide range of crimes to automatically count as “lynching” even if no lynching was involved.

For example, let’s say you resist a cop breaking down your door to take your gun, and in the process of fighting back he shoots up your family. If the judge adds a “hate crime” designation because the officer was black: you have just committed a lynching and got an automatic extra 30 years in jail EVEN IF YOU DID NOT FIRE A SHOT. That’s all it takes. It’s basically “Felony murder (someone gets killed while you commit a felony) + hate crime designation = lynching charges.”

Now they could be doing this for either or both of these reasons:

1. They want the statistic of “annual lynchings” to go up so they can say “see how racist this country is? There were 100,000 lynching all of a sudden this year! Putin’s Lynch Hike!”

2. They just want an easy way to strike fear in those who resist an upcoming wave of police violence. And who wants to stand up for someone accused of lynching?