WORKAROUND

Hegseth Uses Loophole to Bring Back Old Name for Fort Bragg

The military base has its old name—but a different namesake.

Fort Bragg, the North Carolina military base that had been renamed Fort Liberty during the Biden administration, is again known by its original moniker due to a memo signed Monday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

This time, however, the installation’s namesake is not Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, a slaveowner, but Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, an Army paratrooper and mechanic who fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, earning the Silver Star and the Purple Heart.

“This change underscores the installation’s legacy of recognizing those who have demonstrated extraordinary service and sacrifice for the nation,” the Defense Department said in a news release.

The name change is an apparent workaround after Congress in 2021 banned military bases from being named after former Confederates. That legislation had in part grown out of racial justice protests in the summer of 2020 after a white police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, a Black man.

While campaigning for president, Donald Trump called for then-Fort Liberty to be renamed Fort Bragg.

The cost of changing the name to Fort Liberty was estimated at $8 million. It’s unclear how much this most recent change will cost.

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