WASHINGTON — The most public execution in modern American history will not be public after all.
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Dec. 3 execution of Nidal Hasan — the former Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 — will not be livestreamed, ending a Pentagon plan that survived barely a week before collapsing under pressure from the president’s own party.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the broadcast plan last week, arguing Americans should be able to watch and understand the consequences of Hasan’s crimes. The backlash was immediate and bipartisan in tone if not in party: Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan, said he would not watch and doubted the Pentagon would follow through. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would not watch either and noted his colleagues had concerns. Religious leaders objected, and polling showed most Americans opposed airing the execution.
On Thursday, the president sided with the skeptics. In a social media post, Trump wrote that streaming the execution might have been “a strong deterrent” showing how America deals with terrorists, but that many good people would rather not watch Hasan die “through streaming, or through any other visual device.”
“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote.
The one audience the president carved out is the families of the 13 victims, who may attend in person if they wish. “They deserve to witness JUSTICE!” he wrote.
Hasan opened fire at a soldier readiness processing center at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, killing 13 and wounding 32 before officers shot him — wounds that left him paralyzed and using a wheelchair. A military court convicted him in 2013 and sentenced him to death. His execution would be the first by the U.S. military since 1961 and the first by firing squad since World War II.
The reversal lands in the middle of a broader national argument over capital punishment that has run through JNN’s coverage for weeks — from the failed execution of Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike in September to Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s pledge to resume executions in this state. Thursday’s decision settles the narrow question of the broadcast, but not the larger one: how much of an execution the public should see.
