President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, where 13 people were killed and more than 30 were injured. A Department of War letter says the execution is expected to take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3, 2026. The Army secretary is to set the time and place, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. Hasan could challenge the sentence in civilian federal court, a process that could put the execution on hold for years. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, entered a medical building where soldiers were receiving checkups and opened fire with a handgun, according to accounts of the attack. At trial, he said he had acted to prevent soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan and killing fellow Muslims. He made little effort to contest that he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.” The planned execution would be the first carried out under the U.S. military justice system since 1961. Four men, including Hasan, are on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. An earlier presidential approval for the execution of Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008 was halted by a judge; Gray remains imprisoned at Leavenworth. The last military execution was that of Pvt. John Bennett, who was hanged in 1961 after being convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl. Capital sentences and executions are rare in the military system. Trump’s decision comes amid renewed national debate over capital punishment. It followed a failed lethal-injection attempt in Tennessee that led the state’s governor to suspend executions for the year and order an independent review. Trump, who resumed federal executions after a pause under earlier administrations, called the botched attempt “an interesting situation” and said lethal injection “shouldn’t be very difficult.”