Stop the Public Execution of Nidal Hasan! No Medieval Spectacles of Death!

The Trump administration has approved the public, livestreamed execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood—the site of his 2009 attack. Defense Secretary Hegseth has confirmed the plan, stating: "We'll make sure the public can watch... people need to understand there are severe consequences." This is a medieval atrocity dressed as justice, and Congress must do everything in its power to stop it. The last legal public execution in the U.S. was in 1936—a crowd of thousands watched a Black teenager hanged. We are returning to that darkness. Military law experts call the livestream "extremely bizarre," and no other nation televises executions. The execution is a message—and the message is racist. Hasan is a Palestinian-American Muslim who claimed his actions were to protect Muslims abroad. By executing him publicly, the state conflates Palestinian resistance with al-Qaeda terrorism—a lie that endangers every Palestinian and Muslim in America. We denounce al-Qaeda unequivocally. But we refuse to let one man's crimes become a weapon against an entire people. For Palestinians, this is collective punishment by spectacle. For incarcerated people, this normalizes state killing as entertainment. For police abolitionists, this is the prison-industrial complex at its most theatrical—death as a show of force. To those who say he deserves death: We oppose the death penalty in all cases. State killing is not justice—it is violence dressed in law. To those who say this is about terrorism: The U.S. has executed people for centuries; the spectacle is new, but the violence is old. In 2026, voters will remember who stood against barbarism. The state should not kill—and certainly not for entertainment.