Trump reverses Army base names in latest DEI purge
'We are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,' Trump said. 'We won a lot of battles out of those forts, it's no time to change.'
Trump's announcement, during a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg, follows Biden-administration era alterations in 2023 that changed the installation names to honor new, non-Confederate individuals. Those included changing Fort Hood to Fort Cavazos, for the Army's first four-star Hispanic general.
The Army previously redesignated Fort Liberty, previously known as Fort Bragg, to its original name, but honoring Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero instead of the Confederate general Braxton Bragg. The service also redesignated Fort Moore, after Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia Compton Moore, for Fred G. Benning, who won the Distinguished Service Cross during World War I.
The Army is taking the same approach for the bases tapped for renaming on Tuesday, finding award-winning soldiers with the same last names as the Confederate generals to name the bases after, according to a statement released by the service after the president's speech.
The president gave no timeline for the name changes and it was not immediately clear whether the Army's bases would be renamed after Confederate generals or soldiers from different eras. One army official, granted anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak, said they were caught off guard by the rapid-fire developments, which could take months to implement.The Army did not immediately respond to POLITICO's request for comment.
Though the Trump administration insisted the redesignations were in-line with laws that prevent the Pentagon from naming bases after Confederate leaders or battles, Ty Seidule, a retired Army brigadier general who was the vice chair of the Congressional Naming Commission, which is tasked with relabeling bases and U.S. military assets, said that Trump's decision went against the spirit of the new rule enacted after the George Floyd protests.
'The bottom line is he's choosing surname over service,' said Seidule, who's now a visiting professor at Hamilton College. 'It is breaking the spirit of a law that was created by the will of the American people through their elected representatives.'
Seidule said that the commission, which was made up of three Republicans, one Democrat and four retired flag officers, spent 20 months seeking input from the public and got 33,000 responses to change the names of Army bases and other installations and assets named after Confederates, including several U.S. Navy ships.
But he said the decision still reflected that the Trump administration 'realizes that Confederates chose treason to preserve slavery, and they are unworthy of having bases named for them in America in 2025.'
On Tuesday, Trump criticized Biden at several points during his speech, which was full of asides about immigration, transgender Americans and the spending bill currently being debated in Congress.
His political comments in front of hundreds of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division led to a smattering of boos from the mostly uniformed audience when he criticized former President Joe Biden. Audience members also jeered when Trump mentioned California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom the president clashed with over protests in California that were sparked by the Trump administration's immigration raids. Presidents normally avoid giving political speeches to military personnel.
'Do you think this crowd would have showed up for Biden,' Trump said at one point in his remarks. 'I don't think so.'
'We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean and safe again,' Trump said, claiming parts of the city are under the control of international criminal gangs. The president has ordered 4,000 California National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines to Los Angeles, though so far only about 300 guardsmen have entered the city.
The Marines are positioned outside Los Angeles, where they're undergoing training on crowd control, said one defense official who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The move to rename Army bases comes just days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to relabel a Navy vessel named after gay rights activist Harvey Milk as well as other ships named after civil rights leaders and women.
Seidule, the retired Army brigadier general who served on the Biden-era naming commission, said that Trump's decision creates the risk that future administrations could take turns renaming the Army's bases.
'What happens if some other administration would name something after someone that one party thinks is just absolutely beyond the pale,' said Seidule. 'I think that this could absolutely be a tennis match.'
Sam Skove contributed to this report.
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