America is about to hold a public execution and Trump hasn't decided

The Pentagon just confirmed something huge.

The US military's first firing squad execution since World War II is going to be livestreamed. For anyone to watch.

The man being executed is Nidal Hasan. A former Army major. A psychiatrist. He opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, back in two thousand nine. He killed thirteen people. He wounded dozens more — reports differ on the exact count, somewhere between thirty-one and thirty-two, with Donald Trump saying it was more than twenty. He was convicted on forty-five counts. Sentenced to death years ago.

Now here's what's new. Donald Trump approved a firing squad for Hasan's execution earlier this month. Adam Telle, the Acting Secretary of the Army, set the date. The third of December. Early afternoon. Fort Hood, Texas.

And if this livestream happens, it's not just a first for the military. It's the first public execution in America in around ninety years. The last one was a hanging in Kentucky, in front of a crowd.

So why livestream it at all?

Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, gave the answer himself. In an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, with podcaster Jack Posobiec. Pete Hegseth says quote "people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things".

That's the Pentagon's own defence secretary saying the point is deterrence.

But here's the thing. Nobody has actually decided this is happening.

Donald Trump said at one point he'd approved the livestream. Then, just a day later, he said he hadn't made a final call at all. Donald Trump says quote "don't show it and show it" are the two thoughts he's weighing.

Yes, then not-yet. A day apart.

And the opposition isn't coming from one side. It's coming from both.

Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina, called the plan beyond disgusting. He wrote that public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, called the plan disgusting and asked whether Pete Hegseth was mimicking ISIS executions. Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, has criticised it too. So has Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN — she pointed out that Iran and North Korea are among the few countries left that still hold public executions.