On Monday night Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he signed an order restoring the name of the storied special operations forces base in North Carolina back to Fort Bragg.
The Biden administration had changed the name to Fort Liberty in 2023 as part of a national policy of ditching names for military bases named after Confederate leaders. Several other bases were impacted in the sweeping change.
Hegseth announced: "That’s right. Bragg is back!" - in a video posted to X announcing the renaming. Like many other iconic base names which have been in usage for many decades, such as the sprawling Ft. Hood in Texas (now named Ft Cavazos), troops and locals have never really switched.
The Pentagon chief signed the memo shortly before landing in Stuttgart, Germany aboard a US Air Force C-17. He spent time with US soldiers doing PT on Tuesday, and he'll attend a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels this week.
There's a bit of twist behind the renaming which gets around WW2 era law preventing the US government ever issuing new names to bases inspired by Confederate soldiers.
The new Bragg is not from the Confederate General Braxton Bragg from Warrenton, North Carolina (as before) - but the new name honors Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for valor on battlefield during the Battle of the Bulge.
This is certainly a creative way to bring the name back.
Always pic.twitter.com/Jrj5XTKAHG
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) February 11, 2025
"This change underscores the installation’s legacy of recognizing those who have demonstrated extraordinary service and sacrifice for the nation," a Pentagon statement said.
Trump's Pentagon chief has long lobbied to change the base names back in acknowledgement of simple history and the avoidance of political correctness:
Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and former longtime Fox News host, strongly opposed removing the names of Confederate generals from US military bases and has described the renaming efforts as “a sham,” “garbage,” and “crap” in various media appearances, CNN previously reported. He has also suggested they should be changed back, particularly Fort. Bragg.
He has also previously expressed that it's about legacy and honoring those many generations who served at the base and know it only as Bragg: "We should change it back. We should change it back. We should change it back, because legacy matters. My uncle served at Bragg. I served at Bragg. It breaks a generational link," he said in a prior media interview.
And we should add that Rambo First Blood makes sense again, and its famous references to Bragg will once again be recognizable to future generations...
