Lawmakers from both parties vow to fight back if former President Donald Trump makes good on his promise to put a Confederate general’s name back on an Army base if he is re-elected.
Trump’s approval Friday to change the name of the Army’s Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg — undoing the work of a congressional renaming committee — and the bipartisan response signal a new culture war battle between him and Congress if he wins in November.
“I think I just learned the secret to winning absolutely and by huge margins. I’m going to promise you … that we’re going to change the name back to Fort Bragg,” Trump said Friday during a town hall in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Lawmakers in 2021 approved a process to remove the names of Confederate leaders from nine bases over Trump’s objections in the final days of his presidency. If Trump tries to reverse this, lawmakers could use legislation to stop him.
“The law was that you had to remove the Confederate names, and the committee had to determine what those names should be,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who led the legislation to create the renaming panel, said in a short interview. “The law has been passed, there will be no further regression.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who led the legislation in the Senate, also argued that the renaming is a done deal.
“The last time Donald Trump tried to block the base’s name change, Congress overruled him with strong bipartisan support,” Warren said in a statement. “This latest tirade is a desperate political stunt designed to distract and divide us. Trump must listen to military leaders who have honored generations of loyal service members by supporting the renaming of these bases.”
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on lawmakers’ pledge to fight his move.
Fort Bragg was originally named after Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slave owner best known for his battlefield failures. Many Confederate bases, including Fort Bragg, were named after Confederate figures long after the Civil War, before and during World War I to rally support for the war effort in the South.
“This was a deal made roughly between 1910 and 1930 with the Jim Crow South, and I’m not a Jim Crow South man,” Bacon said.
In 2020, Congress decided to create a commission to rename the posts and identify other military properties that honor the Confederacy, such as a few Navy ships, buildings and memorials. The decision followed widespread social justice protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The bipartisan commission was included in annual defense policy legislation in 2020 and was one of the main reasons Trump vetoed the bill. The former president said at the time that he “wouldn’t even consider” the move — even though then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and then-Defense Secretary Ryan McCarthy were open to it. Congress has overridden Trump’s veto of the defense bill, setting in motion the years-long process of changing the name.
“President Trump has been clear in his opposition to politically motivated efforts like this to rewrite history and replace the enduring legacy of the American Revolution in the service of a new left-wing cultural revolution,” the White House said of the legislation at the time.
As part of Congress’ mandate, the Army renamed nine Army installations, including Fort Bragg, to remove the names of Confederate figures.
The effort to rename the bases was bipartisan and passed both chambers of Congress in 2020, even though Republicans controlled the Senate. But by charging a commission with renaming bases and removing other Confederate decorations and gathering the opinions of local communities and other groups in the process, lawmakers gave themselves political cover against potential backlash.
The panel ultimately recommended new names for the nine installations in 2022, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin accepted the recommendations. The commissioners also cataloged other decorations to be removed, including renaming the USS Chancellorsville, a Navy cruiser named after a battle won by the Confederacy, and removing a portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at West Point.
The Pentagon on Wednesday defended the process, saying the name change was “authorized by Congress” and made law, but a spokesman declined to comment on future action.
Trump could make good on his promise to return to Fort Liberty’s old name because the executive branch, through the Defense Department and individual military services, controls the naming of military installations, said Paul Arcangeli, the former director of the Democratic House Armed Services staff. Commission.
Although the legislation creating the renaming committee directed the Secretary of Defense to implement the panel’s recommendations, it did not change the department responsible for base naming decisions. President Joe Biden could have changed the names of the bases without the commission if he wanted to, and Trump could do the same if he were re-elected.
“No legislation was needed to make the change at all,” Arcangeli said. “The committee has made the recommendations. The Secretary has implemented these recommendations. … I was involved in all of that, and it is within the power of the executive branch.
Trump is not alone among Republicans dealing with this issue. Despite bipartisan support for removing the names of Confederate leaders from bases, some conservatives still fought the commission’s work. Last year, the House rejected a proposal to scrap the naming committee, even though most Army installations had already been renamed by then. Lawmakers approved a $2 million budget for the commission when it was created.
An initial report from the panel in mid-2022 recommending new names estimated the total cost of renaming all nine bases and other assets on those installations, such as buildings and street signs, at $21 million.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence both promised that if elected president, they would turn Fort Liberty back into Fort Bragg as they campaigned for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party.
Kori Schake, member of the base’s name change committee, said Gold Star families chose the name Fort Liberty to honor the sacrifices of fallen service members. She argued that a return would be inappropriate and disrespectful.
“The name came from the people who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Schake, a defense scientist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said in a statement. ‘They chose this name to honor our dead. And that seems much more appropriate than naming it for a disgraced (and mediocre) general.”
