October 11, 2026 — Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing rare bipartisan condemnation over his plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and wounding nearly three dozen others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.
Hegseth confirmed the plan in an interview this week, saying the execution would be made public because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for such crimes. The execution is set for December 3 at Fort Hood in Texas — at 1pm local time, the same hour Hasan opened fire in 2009 — and would be carried out by soldiers with rifles, according to reports.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis called the proposal beyond disgusting, writing that public executions are what oppressive dictatorships do and should not happen in America. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, learning of the plan during a television interview, called it medieval and asked whether the Pentagon was mimicking extremist propaganda. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced it as a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on whether the broadcast would go ahead at all, telling reporters he was unsure the plan would survive and that he would not watch it. President Donald Trump has said he approved the firing-squad method.
The dispute is not over the sentence itself — even Hegseth’s fiercest critics say they support the death penalty in this case — but over making a spectacle of it. No US serviceman has been executed since 1961, and no American has been put to death publicly since 1936. Legal analysts have also questioned whether a livestream could clash with Army regulations governing who may witness a military execution.
The split inside the administration is striking: while the president has given the plan his blessing, his vice president is openly sceptical it will happen. Military-law specialists add another complication, noting that Army Regulation 190-55 strictly limits who may witness a military execution and bars minors — provisions the Army’s provost marshal general could waive, but only within the bounds of law. With the December date approaching, the Pentagon has yet to say how — or whether — the broadcast would work in practice.
