President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the government will not livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, reversing a plan that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had publicly championed just a week earlier. "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed," Trump wrote on Truth Social, according to NBC News.

The execution itself is not in doubt. Hasan, paralyzed from the chest down since he was shot by police during the 2009 rampage at the Texas base, is scheduled to die by Army firing squad at 1 p.m. Central time on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, the same post where he opened fire while shouting "Allahu Akbar." Victims' family members will be allowed to watch in person if they choose, though it will no longer be piped out to a global audience.

Hegseth had told reporters just days earlier that Hasan "is going to get a firing squad of soldiers, and we'll make sure that people are able to watch it," and he personally pushed for Fort Hood as the site over Army and Pentagon officials' objections, according to NBC News. A White House official said Trump had not realized Hasan was paralyzed, which factored into his reversal, and Trump himself said streaming "might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan," but conceded "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die."

Public opinion was lopsided: an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found roughly eight in 10 Americans said the execution should not be broadcast live, per ABC News. The pushback crossed party lines. Outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis was blunt about it.

"PUBLIC EXECUTIONS ARE WHAT OPPRESSIVE DICTATORSHIPS LIKE IRAN AND AFGHANISTAN DO."

Vice President JD Vance said before the reversal that he wasn't sure the livestream would actually happen and that he personally would not watch it, while House Speaker Mike Johnson warned a broadcast video "could be used by future terrorists as a recruiting tool." Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell insisted afterward that "the Secretary supports the President's decision, and they are completely aligned," papering over reports that Hegseth had driven the original plan.

Reaction among Fort Hood survivors was mixed but mostly relieved. Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times in the attack, called the reversal "a very smart choice" and said he never wanted the execution "viewed upon as a spectacle, like a pay-per-view event," according to ABC News. Hasan's civilian attorney, John Galligan, said the original livestream order had violated Army regulations and that reversing it was "a mistake" to have proposed at all.

The reversal does not resolve every question. The military has not carried out an execution since 1961 and has not used a firing squad since 1945, making Hasan's case the first test of the method in generations, and his attorneys could still mount a last-minute legal challenge to delay the Dec. 3 date. For now, the only thing settled is that the public won't be watching live.