FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 — The Pentagon plans to execute former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad on Dec. 3 — and to livestream it to the public. The plan drew the president’s backing on Friday and a swift backlash: Senate Republicans are calling the livestream “beyond disgusting” and urging the Pentagon to reconsider, the vice president says he will not watch, and the nation’s Catholic bishops have condemned it.
The sequence moved quickly. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Oct. 8 that the execution would be public: “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Pentagon officials clarified Thursday that it would be livestreamed. And on Friday, President Trump endorsed the firing squad itself at a Columbus Day event at the White House, said: “Death penalty through firing squad, and he deserves it... Killed and wounded many, many people. A maniac.” The White House did not say whether Trump supports the livestream.
The announcement has set off a debate that cuts across the usual political lines — over what a public execution would mean for the victims’ families, for the military, and for a country that has never once broadcast one.
The announcement and the endorsement
Hegseth’s Oct. 8 remarks were the first public confirmation that the Pentagon intended to open the execution to viewers. Asked about the plan, the defense secretary said simply: “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Pentagon officials then clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed, turning what would already have been a historic proceeding into something with no precedent anywhere in American government.
Trump weighed in Friday, backing the method of execution in blunt terms at the White House. “Death penalty through firing squad, and he deserves it,” the president said. “Killed and wounded many, many people. A maniac.” He did not address the livestream question, and the White House did not say afterward whether he supports broadcasting the execution. That distinction matters: one thing is the sentence itself, ordered by a military court and affirmed through years of review; quite another is turning it into a public viewing event.
The crime and the conviction
Hasan was convicted in 2013 for the Nov. 5, 2009, mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas — now Fort Cavazos — in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 wounded. It remains one of the deadliest shootings on a U.S. military installation in history, and its weight has never left the families of those who died, the survivors, or the base community that endured it.
The execution date, Dec. 3, comes after more than a decade of appeals and review. Military executions are extraordinarily rare: the military has not carried out a firing-squad execution since Jan. 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie Slovik was executed in France, and it has not carried out an execution of any kind since 1961, according to The Times. What the Pentagon is proposing, then, is a break with more than 80 years of military practice — and in the case of the livestream, with something no American government has ever done at all.
A first with no precedent
The livestream is the part that has no analogue. The Death Penalty Information Center, the nation’s leading authority on capital punishment research, could find no record of any execution ever being livestreamed by any government, USA Today reported. Executions in the United States have historically been witnessed by a small group of official witnesses and, in some states, members of the media. A live broadcast available to the public would be a departure not just from military practice, but from every recorded government practice anywhere.
That novelty is at the heart of the criticism. To the plan’s defenders, a public execution is a matter of transparency and, in Trump’s framing, of deserved punishment. To its critics, broadcasting a man’s death live is something else entirely — a spectacle that serves no legitimate interest of justice and risks becoming the defining image of the American military in the world’s eyes.
The backlash, from all sides
The most significant pushback has come from inside the president’s own party. Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on the plan Friday, questioning whether it would even proceed — “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” he said — and drawing his own line at the broadcast: “If it’s through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it.” It is rare for a sitting vice president to publicly hedge against a defense secretary’s announced plan.
Senate Republicans went further. Sen. John Curtis of Utah urged Hegseth to “reconsider” the livestream, and Sen. Thom Tillis called it “beyond disgusting” on X. Their objections, like Vance’s, are not about the sentence — Hasan’s conviction and death sentence have stood for more than a decade — but about turning the execution into public content.
Beyond Washington, the condemnation crossed religious and cultural lines. Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the livestream plan a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death” in a Friday statement. Entertainers have weighed in as well: Henry Winkler and Alyssa Farah Griffin were among those condemning the plan, according to TheWrap.
What happens next
The execution is set for Dec. 3, but the livestream plan is far from settled. Vance’s public doubt — “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen” — suggests the administration has not reached a final decision, and the pressure from Senate Republicans and religious leaders gives the Pentagon reason to rethink. Whether Trump, having endorsed the firing squad, will weigh in on the broadcast itself is an open question the White House declined to answer Friday.
What is certain is that this is a moment with no playbook. There is no American precedent for a livestreamed execution, no military precedent in eight decades for the firing squad itself, and now a split at the top of the government over whether the world should be invited to watch. The families of the 13 people killed at Fort Hood have lived with that day for nearly 17 years. Whatever the Pentagon decides, it is their loss that sits at the center of this story — and it is owed more than a spectacle.
