Military Religious Freedom Foundation

At least 60 soldiers want to recuse themselves as potential members of a firing squad after Hegseth ordered that it be live streamed.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a non-profit that advocates for service members' constitutional rights, allege that dozens of active duty service members have, quote, "religious or moral objections to being part of this execution for a variety of different reasons." You even have some former military chiefs revolting over this plan.

Dozens of retired American military leaders have demanded that Hegseth scrap the plan.

The extraordinary intervention by 72 former senior officers, including generals, admirals, and military lawyers, comes as outrage grows over the defense secretary's decision to broadcast the killing of Nidal Hasan.

And of the remaining 31, only 9 are non-Christian faiths.

Hegseth also launched a campaign targeting recruits and cadets using the Old Testament passage, "Here I am, send me." His infusion of evangelical and Christian nationalist rhetoric into his public remarks has drawn legal and public scrutiny and prompted hundreds of service members to file complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, with its founder saying, quote, "It's ripping and tearing them apart.

It destroys good order, morale, discipline, and especially unit cohesion." But for all Hegseth's Christian posturing, he's getting intense pushback from religious leaders for his plan to publicly live stream the military firing squad execution Nidal Hasan, convicted of fatally shooting 13 people and injuring 32 when he opened fire at Fort Hood in 2009.

With the religious freedom of our armed forces on the line, I want to bring in MS Now Pentagon reporter Priya Shriather.

Yeah, Alicia, one of the most prominent archbishops in the United States who's responsible for Catholic service members actually released a very strongly worded statement essentially calling that idea barbaric, and he brought up a lot of the points that Ayman made as far as this being essentially used potentially as a recruiting tool for extremist groups overseas.

And he basically encouraged Catholic service members specifically to basically file petitions and get religious exemptions which would, uh, allow them to not be required to participate potentially in the firing squad.

And I can tell you that Mikey Weinstein, who is the founder of relig- um, Religious, uh, Freedom Foundation, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me that they've, he's already gotten 70 soldiers who have filed complaints with his organization because they feel extremely concerned about that potential.

potential.All right.

So that is definitely something that I've been hearing.

Also, you know, I was speaking to a source this morning who said he's the founder of what's called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and he said he's already gotten six soldiers who have filed, uh, complaints with him saying that they don't wanna potentially be part of this firing squad.

He expects that there could be 120 to 180 more.

So a lot of people are morally objecting to what's going on, and I would see- say that the overwhelming sense right now is there is alarm over how this war in Iran is going to end, the fact that we're stretching our assets to the brink.