Senate, House NDAAs address Confederate military names

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has undone a 2022 congressionally chartered commission’s renaming of military bases and ships that had for years celebrated the Confederacy, but as of this week both the House and Senate are poised to consider at least a partial reversal of President Donald Trump’s moves.

The House fiscal 2026 NDAA contains an amendment by Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., that would ensure all the formerly Confederate-linked facilities, assets and streets across the U.S. military are renamed along the lines proposed by the 2022 commission to honor other warriors or certain values. Strickland’s amendment was adopted by the narrowest of margins: one vote, thanks to just two Republicans bucking their colleagues to support her provision.

The Senate’s NDAA, meanwhile, contains language that would achieve the same aim as Strickland’s amendment — but only for Virginia, as of now.

As a result, the issue of how to remember racially charged U.S. history is again coming to the fore in the debate over the defense authorization bill.

Trump, in his first term, vetoed the fiscal 2021 NDAA, largely because it created the base renaming commission. Bipartisan majorities overrode his veto.

This year, Trump’s Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has wasted no time restoring the old Confederate names, albeit in slightly revised form.

If Congress rebuffs Trump again this year and codifies the commission’s names, and if the president and his congressional allies fight back fiercely as before, the coming debate could at least complicate — if not stymie — the NDAA’s progress toward enactment for the 65th fiscal year in a row.

An aide to Strickland said the committees’ actions are the first step in a long process that could become combative.

“It’s very likely that this amendment will face some friction from broader House Republicans, especially when their effort to rename military bases after Confederate leaders is being spearheaded by the top of their party — President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” the aide said.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon immediately replied to a request for comment.

Strickland’s amendment to the House NDAA would bar the Pentagon from undoing the 2022 recommendations from the commission to change the Confederate homages across the U.S. military.

“Since the height of the Jim Crow era, our servicemembers, who come from every background and walk of life, have been working and living at installations that honor men who took up arms in rebellion against our country, fighting to preserve the institution of slavery,” Strickland said.

The only GOP votes in favor of Strickland’s measure in committee came from Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Derek Schmidt of Kansas.

The 2022 commission proposed changing the names of nine Army bases and three Navy ships that had celebrated figures from the Confederacy. Instead, the panel said, those facilities and assets should honor other war heroes or extol American values.

The commission said, for example, that Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which had been named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, would become Fort Liberty.

The Biden administration implemented the changes in 2023.

Trump, in his second term, has restored the old Confederate names — but with a sleight of hand, by ostensibly attributing the names not to Confederates like Gen. Bragg but to others, like Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero, who share the same surname.

Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., said at the House Armed Services Committee markup that many Americans had perceived the naming commission’s actions as “an attack on American history.”

Trump and Hegseth, he said, are “working to restore and honor American history” and “are not renaming bases in support of Confederate heroes.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the Trump administration was using a feint to try to have it both ways on the issue.

“The fundamental dishonesty of this argument is just staggering to me,” Smith said. “You’re going to have us believe that there was just this unbelievable coincidence: Of all the names of all the servicemembers that have served honorably in this country for a couple centuries now, we just happened to pick the exact same names of the Confederates who went before?”

The Senate’s NDAA, approved last week but only made public Wednesday, contains a provision that has received virtually no public attention: A codification of the commission’s recommendations and a ban on reversing them — but only for facilities and assets in Virginia.

Senators from other states could seek — either during floor debate or in a House-Senate conference — to broaden the provision’s applicability to other states or to the whole country.

For example, Fort Gordon and Fort Benning in Georgia are two bases formerly named after Confederate officers. The commission changed their names to Fort Eisenhower and Fort Moore, respectively, honoring 20th-century generals.

Now the Pentagon is going back to the original names and arguing that it is not celebrating insurrectionists but instead war heroes from other eras.

Georgia’s Democratic senators — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — could seek to ensure that the names Fort Moore and Fort Eisenhower stick when the Senate takes up the NDAA, which could happen before the August recess. Neither senator’s office would comment on the matter.

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who was a member of the renaming commission and who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, voted against Strickland’s amendment during the panel’s markup this week.

Scott was able to secure adoption by voice vote of an amendment to the bill that would finesse the naming of Fort Gordon — by calling it Fort Shughart Gordon.

He said in a statement that the new name would honor Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart, two Army Medal of Honor awardees who died in the October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.

The congressional push in 2020 to create the military naming commission to discontinue the celebration of Confederate warriors was sparked by the national reckoning on race that followed the police killing earlier that year of George Floyd, a Black American.

Trump was vehement then in his opposition to the naming commission. He vetoed the bill creating the panel in late 2020, saying the base names have “taken on significance to the American story and those who have helped write it that far transcends their namesakes.”

Trump called the commission a “politically motivated” attempt to “wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.”

Congress overrode that veto in January 2021, and the commission completed its work nearly two years later after taking input from the affected communities and others.

Last month, Trump spoke to soldiers at Fort Bragg and said of the old names: “We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change, and I’m superstitious. We want to keep it going.”

Hegseth told lawmakers that same month that restoring the base names was “important for the morale” of the military.

“Ask people that serve at Fort Bragg or Fort Benning if they like the fact that the names have been returned,” he said.

Bacon, who is retiring after this term, pointed out during the committee debate Tuesday on Strickland’s proposal that a Democratic House and Republican Senate cleared the fiscal 2021 NDAA despite the president’s veto threat — and then overrode his veto.

“This has been hashed out,” Bacon said. Hegseth, he added, is now “sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going back to the old names — granted, different first names.”

(Briana Reilly and Mark Satter contributed to this report.)