Donald Trump’s administration has announced that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad will be livestreamed.

In an interview with right-wing activist Jack Posobiec on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution of Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others at the Fort Hood military base in 2009, was a “no brainer.”

“He’s gonna get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

The Pentagon later clarified that the execution will be livestreamed.

Hasan is scheduled to be killed December 3, marking the U.S. military’s first execution by firing squad since 1945, part of a renewed push by the president to restart federal executions and turn to methods such as firing squads as well as nitrogen gas and electrocution to carry out sentences quicker.

“Judgment day for Hasan has finally come,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X earlier this week following Trump’s approval of the killing.

Asked on Thursday whether Hasan made any final requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Hegseth said: “Don’t care.”

“We’ll see him on December 3,” he said.

Hasan was convicted by a military jury on 45 counts of murder and sentenced to death in 2013.

Hasan, who was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan at the end of 2009, admitted responsibility for the shooting and said he believed was on the wrong side of a war against Islam.

He ​was left partially paralyzed after he was ⁠shot by police during his arrest.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a death sentence imposed by court-martial ​may not be ⁠carried out “until approved by the president.”

If the Pentagon carries out the killing, Hasan will be the first person killed by a military firing squad since January 31, 1945, when Army Private Eddie Slovik faced 12 riflemen from his own unit.

During Trump’s first term, the federal government executed 13 people, the most under any president in more than 120 years, and a streak that resumed after a 17-year hiatus.

Before he left office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people awaiting executions on federal death row, leaving death sentences in place for only three men. Hours after he returned to the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to seek the death penalty in future cases “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice unveiled a plan to “strengthen the death penalty” by directing the Bureau of Prisons to use pentobarbital for lethal injections and consider other execution methods — including firing squads and even electrocution — to expedite death sentences of federal death row inmates.

Two dozen states do not carry out capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Deterrence is “one of the most com­mon­ly expressed rea­sons” for using the death penalty. But despite Trump’s claims, evidence shows that “states that impose the death penal­ty are not safer than states that do not use the death penal­ty,” according to the center.

At least five states allow firing squads as a method of execution. Last year, South Carolina carried out three killings by firing squad, the first in more than a decade.

In April 2025, a three-person firing squad in South Carolina shot Mikal Mahdi, who cried out as the bullets struck him. He groaned twice before taking one final breath.

An autopsy report later revealed two wounds on his chest, and none of the bullets directly hit his heart, which is where the gunmen are supposed to aim. Mahdi, 42, endured “excruciating conscious pain and suffering” for up to one minute and suffered a prolonged death, according to his attorneys.

This is a developing story