President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he is restoring the names of Confederate traitors who fought to keep Black people enslaved to American military bases across the country despite Congress mandating their removal in a law enacted over his veto five years ago.
Speaking to active-duty troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — which had been renamed Fort Liberty under President Joe Biden — Trump told the assembled soldiers he would also be restoring the names of Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee.
All of those bases are in the south — which formed the former pro-slavery confederacy — and were named by southern lawmakers who sought to honor the “Lost Cause” of the fight against emancipating Black slaves.
“We won a lot of battles out of those forts — it's no time to change,” said Trump, who said he was “very superstitious” and therefore against renaming the bases despite Congress ordering it done in the waning months of his first term.
Trump actually vetoed the legislation mandating the renaming of bases that honored Confederate generals, the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, in December 2020, citing the provisions for renaming the facilities as justification for the unprecedented rejection of the must-pass bill.
In a veto message, Trump complained that the NDAA “would require the renaming of certain military installations,” with those provisions having been added by House and Senate members in the wake of racial justice protests following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“Over the course of United States history, these locations have taken on significance to the American story and those who have helped write it that far transcends their namesakes,” he said, condemning Congress’ directive as a “politically motivated attempts like this to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.”
That 2020 law remains in effect, which means Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have to find other veterans with identical names to rename the bases after.
Earlier this year, Hegseth ordered the name Fort Bragg to be restored. But instead of honoring Confederate general Braxton Bragg, the base is now named for a much lower-ranked soldier, Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, a World War II veteran who earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge.
In a statement at the time, Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed, the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, said Hegseth had “not violated the letter of the law, but he has violated its spirit.”
