The Pentagon’s announcement that it intends to livestream the firing squad execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who carried out a mass shooting at Texas’ Fort Hood military base in 2009, has sparked widespread criticism.

The announcement has raised questions about the ethics of public executions and renewed backlash to the Trump administration’s embrace of the death penalty.

Here are some things to know about Hasan’s scheduled execution.

When will it take place?

Hasan is scheduled to be put to death by firing squad on Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. local time, according to acting Army Secretary Adam Telle.

Hasan’s execution is scheduled to take place around the time he opened fire on the U.S. Army post in 2009, killing 13 people and injuring 32 others.

However, Hasan could file a habeas petition in civilian court, which would allow a review of the legality of his detention. (Hasan was tried and convicted by a military tribunal, which is separate from the criminal justice system.) Such a move could indefinitely delay his execution, potentially even beyond the current administration’s term.

Why by firing squad?

Hasan’s execution by firing squad was recommended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and approved by President Donald Trump, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.

Hasan will be the first person to face a firing squad since World War II, Hegseth said. It will also be the first U.S. military execution in more than 60 years, after Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging on April 13, 1961.

Trump is a longtime proponent for the death penalty. In April, the Justice Department expanded methods of federal executions to include firing squads and single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital, the use of which was halted by the Biden administration. (Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate, recently survived a failed state execution after being administered two lethal doses of pentobarbital.)

Has an execution ever been livestreamed?

In a statement to MS NOW, Robin M. Maher, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said the organization is not aware of any “regulation or historical precedent for a military execution to be live streamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.”

The military’s current guidelines allow for specific individuals to be present at an execution and states, “No person under the age of 18 shall witness the execution.”

It’s unclear how such guidelines would affect an online broadcast, or whether the Pentagon would argue for an exception.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr told CNBC on Friday that the execution was unlikely to be broadcast on television but, with regard to the livestream, “ultimately we’re going to defer to Secretary Hegseth and, you know, his decisions on how to move forward with this.”

Vice President JD Vance has suggested the livestream may not happen.

“I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen,” he told a reporter on Friday before detailing the severity of Hasan’s actions. “So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is the guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people.”

Vance added, “Now, that said, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it.”

What has Hegseth said about Hasan’s execution?

The defense secretary has suggested that a public execution is necessary to deter future acts of violence.

“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,” Hegseth said Thursday.

Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests to the Trump administration, Hegseth said, “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.”

Has Trump said anything about it?

Trump on Friday said that Hasan “deserves” the death penalty, calling him “a maniac.” But the president has not addressed the matter of whether Hasan’s execution will be livestreamed.

The president has previously criticized public executions in Iran. Before the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, Trump credited himself for staving off the “hanging” of protesters by the regime.

“We let them know that if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them. And they decided not to do it. They didn’t hang the people,” Trump said in January.

In his State of the Union address weeks later, he said of Iran, “We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.”

How has the public reacted to news?

Opponents of the death penalty have been critical of Hasan’s planned execution. But the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution by firing squad has been met with enormous pushback from a variety of sources.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump critic, called it “beyond disgusting” on X.

“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do,” the North Carolina Republican said. “It should not be happening in America.”

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., also pointed out that public executions are “the kind of thing Iran and the Taliban do.”

Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March in opposition to the Iran war, said on X that it is “beneath the dignity & decency of our nation” and risks radicalizing others.

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the decision to livestream Hasan’s eexcution is “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.”

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From MS Now.