In a disturbing sign of the times, the federal government plans to livestream an execution for Americans to watch at home.
On Thursday, the Pentagon told the Associated Press the execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan will be streamed live to the nation in December.
Hasan opened fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others. He was sentenced to death in 2013 following a court-martial.
He is scheduled to be put to death by a firing squad on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood in Texas, the Army announced in a press release on Wednesday, Oct. 7.
“On Oct. 2, 2026, President Donald J. Trump approved the death sentence in this case. The President acted following completion of a full appellate process which upheld the conviction and sentence to death,” the Army said.
In an interview with right-wing TV network Real America’s Voice, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration wants the public to witness the execution.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these types of things,” he said.
Hegseth noted that there hadn’t been a military execution by firing squad since World War II.
“I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II,” he said before launching into a rant about standing your ground.
“Radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood, of course we’re gonna to do it at Fort Hood. We’re gonna do it on a Thursday. We’re gonna do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it,” Hegseth said. “It’s gonna be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad.”
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, slammed the plan.
“Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” Tillis said in a statement on social media Thursday night.
Some media reports said this would be the first public execution in the country in almost a century.
Elisabeth Semel, co-director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, told the AP the administration’s plan for a public execution raises serious questions about the “motivation” behind the idea.
“This is a president who’s about spectacle and that’s, I think, precisely the message that he intends to deliver,” Semel said.
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