We began this episode with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s decision to livestream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hassan, the former Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 fellow servicemen and women at Fort Hood in Texas. That decision has since been rescinded by President Donald Trump. Our theme music this week is “The Weight,” written by Robbie Robertson and performed by The Staples Singers, copyrighted music licensed from LikD.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that convicted murderer Nidal Hassan would be publicly executed on October 7, 2026. Photo credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech/Wikimedia Commons
In the News:
* Another norm bites the dust: the DOJ has long refrained from headline-grabbing actions in the 60 days prior to an election. On Monday, Homeland Security agents raided the Washington-area home of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar (MN-05). At a rally later that day, President Donald Trump led a crowd in chants demanding that she be deported. Omar, who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, has been a regular MAGA target. The investigation is based on accusations that Omar lied about her age to obtain US citizenship over 27 years ago. She has also been investigated for campaign finance violations and contact with foreign entities. Trump has repeatedly threatened to denaturalize Omar on the basis of an unsubstantiated claim that Omar’s first husband is her brother.
* Trump has also forced Kimberly Guilfoyle out as Ambassador to Greece. Dogged by corruption charges first broken by the Wall Street Journal last weekend, Guilfoyle appears to have pursued financial and, in one case, sexual, relationships with various Greek tycoons. But that’s not all! She also appears to have asked Trump donor Eric Deters to pay a $100,000 AmEx bill and shouldered her way, uninvited, into a dinner with Eric Trump. The twice-married former Fox News host was sent to Greece in the first place after former fiancé Donald Trump, Jr. began to date Bettina Anderson. Although Trump has bragged about using other people’s money to benefit himself, he reportedly hates it when members of his circle exploit their connections for their own grifts.
* To paraphrase the immortal words of Richard Nixon, we don’t have Karoline Leavitt to kick around anymore: she’s off to Fox News, replaced by Katie Zacharia, after a week when there was no press secretary at all. Zacharia has mostly worked for various arms of the GOP, at Newsmaxx, and at Homeland Security, and was worse than no press secretary at all: she lasted 5 days. Zacharia’s first press conference took 15 minutes, much of which was consumed by an opening statement she read haltingly. A graduate of Pepperdine Law School, there is no evidence that Zacharia ever passed the bar. When asked about this, she claimed to have taken the exam “in China” while working for a Chinese law firm, but that too seemed unlikely, and she has now admitted that wasn’t true.
Your hosts:
* Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
* Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Former U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood. Texas. Photo credit: Sgt. Jason R. Krawczyk/Wikimedia Commons
News focus: The United States is one of only 53 nations that retains the death penalty, and 30 that use it. Of those 30, nine only use it for the most extraordinary crimes. This puts the United States in the company of nations like Iran and China, although the U.S. executes far fewer people. Last week’s proposed public execution would have put the United States in even more elite company: Iran and Afghanistan.
* Eighteen year-old Christa Pike was sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 for her part in the violent murder of Colleen Slemmer. Like many people who commit horrific crimes, Pike was herself abused. On September 30, Tennessee attempted to kill her by lethal injection and failed. Pike survived two rounds of phenobarbital injections, and after some confusion, was finally transported to the hospital. She is now up and walking but with damaged arms. It’s unclear whether she can be legally executed again. A repetition raises legal and ethical issues, principally double jeopardy and the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Had the state succeeded, she would have been the first woman in 200 years to be executed in Tennessee.
* In Texas, Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, also awaits a December 3 execution: he would be the first active-duty serviceman to be executed since 1961. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made news last week when he announced that Hasan’s death by firing squad would be live streamed, an idea that many Americans find repulsive Conservative pundit George Will called the plan “barbaric;” JD Vance said he wouldn’t watch it, but declined to comment further; and Speaker Mike Johnson says he “has concerns.” Trump, was said to have doubts about the visuals of executing Nidal, who is paralyzed from the waist down, and has now canceled the event. Some observers say this spectacle is linked to the failure of the Pike execution, and the White House’s desire to re-establish execution as a routine punishment.
* Trump has overseen more federal executions than any other President: all 13 were in the final 6 months of his presidency. His return to power has sparked a surge of executions nationwide: 47 in 2025 and 28 so far this year. The peak year was 1999, the final year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, when 98 people were put to death. Only 27 states still have the death penalty; 23 have abolished it.
* Since the founding, 1685 people have been executed in the United States. That does not include 6500 lynchings between 1865 and 1950, or 160 American servicemen put to death between 1940 and 1961, the last military execution. Currently, there are almost 2,000 people on death row nationwide.
* The last two public executions in the United States were in the 1930s, after which politicians agreed that the practice was degrading to the public. In 1936 Rainey Bethea, an African American handyman accused of rape and murder, was hanged in Owensboro, KY in front of 20,000 people, an event that writer and filmmaker Sonya Lea characterized as a “legal lynching.” Prosecutors dropped the murder charge to create this spectacle: state law mandated public hanging as punishment for rape. In 1937, Roscoe Jackson, a white man, was publicly hanged in Galena, Missouri for the robbery-murder of traveling salesman Pearl Bozarth.
* The Supreme Court suspended the death penalty in 1972. In a 5-4 decision in Furman v. Georgia, the court agreed with plaintiffs that it was being applied “capriciously.” In 1976 the court reinstated execution with “guided statutes,” and in 1977, murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad, ending the moratorium. Here’s a timeline.
* The Trump administration argues that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime; Amnesty International argues that is a myth. Others opposed to the death penalty say that it does not make communities safer. Libertarians also often oppose the death penalty, in part because of the danger of executing innocent people.
* Another conservative argument against the death penalty is that it costs between $1 and 3 million more to sentence a person to death than to sentence them to life. There is also a Christian argument against execution by the state: the retribution is not just or restorative, that it undermines a pro-life position, and the clemency permits conversion and repentance.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read Ruth Graham’s article about Adam Hamilton, “A Megachurch Pastor is Running for Senate. Will Democrats Support Him?” (New York Times, October 15, 2026). Hamilton’s campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in Kansas gives us a birds-eye view of how people of faith might return to the Democratic Party—and what approaches could coax a state away from GOP dominance.
* Claire wants you to read Sarah Longwell’s How to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a Time(St. Martin’s Press, 2026), a book about how to talk to voters in a polarized society. A life-long Republican, Longwell is a political consultant and a former Board member of the Log Cabin Club. She broke with that organization and the GOP in 2015 as Donald Trump took over the party. Subsequently, Longwell was a founder of the Never-Trump publication The Bulwark—the book is both an analysis of why MAGA was able to sway many voters, why it is starting to lose traction, and how Democrats can defeat Trumpism.
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