The Pentagon plans to livestream the Dec. 3 firing-squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009. The execution would take place at the same base, on the same weekday and at the same time that Hasan opened fire. The New York Times reported that Americans would be invited to watch on phones, laptops and other screens, making it, the paper said, the first official execution broadcast live in the United States.
A public execution by order of the state
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained the purpose in an interview with a conservative news outlet: “We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand there's serious consequences for these types of things.” President Donald Trump said he approved the plan. “Did I approve? Absolutely I did,” he told reporters. At a White House event, Trump said Hasan would receive “the death penalty through firing squad. And he deserves it,” and called him “a maniac.”
The Pentagon's plan pairs the military's power to carry out an execution with a proposed public broadcast. The article says officials didn't describe any limits on who could watch, though an Army manual restricts witnesses at an execution. It doesn't explain how the livestream proposal would fit those limits.
Trump didn't mention the livestream at the White House event. The New York Times reported that the proposal surprised some people within the administration. Hegseth made the public case for the plan, saying that watching the execution would help people understand its consequences.
A method questioned, a spectacle disputed
Vice President JD Vance questioned whether the livestream would happen. “I don't know that that's actually going to happen,” he said, adding that if it did, “I'm not going to be watching it.” Vance also said, “So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don't forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people.”
Vance is a convert to the Catholic Church, which has long opposed capital punishment. Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the decision in a statement. “It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War's decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan,” he said. “Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan's actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
The article describes opposition from church leaders and Vance, but no grassroots or community-organized response. It offers no legislative or electoral alternative. Instead, the account sets officials’ statements against the church's objections, while the Pentagon keeps control of the execution plan.
The machinery behind the decision
Trump approved the firing-squad method days after a failed attempt late the previous month to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection prompted Tennessee's governor to halt further executions in the state this year. Hegseth said the military hadn't executed a service member by firing squad since World War II. The last military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging.
Those details place the planned firing squad within a broader record of state executions, while the livestream proposal adds a public audience to the military's planned act. The article provides no details about how officials would produce the broadcast or control access. It names the central decision-makers: Trump approved the plan, the Pentagon intends to carry it out, and Hegseth says the public should be able to watch.