Pentagon Reverts Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg, With a New Namesake

On February 10, 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo renaming Fort Liberty, North Carolina, back to Fort Bragg. The 2023 name change to Fort Liberty had followed a congressionally mandated commission process removing Confederate honorees from military installations, since the original Fort Bragg name commemorated Confederate General Braxton Bragg.

To work around the law barring Confederate namesakes, the Pentagon designated the new Fort Bragg name as honoring a different Bragg: Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II veteran awarded the Silver Star for actions during the Battle of the Bulge. Senator Jack Reed and other Democrats criticized the move as a technical workaround that undermined the intent of the 2019 law.

Similar reversals followed at other bases, including Fort Benning, as part of a broader Trump administration effort to restore original names at installations that had been changed to remove Confederate associations.

Supporters framed the renaming as restoring military tradition and morale; critics saw it as a symbolic rollback of the earlier reform, achieved through a naming technicality rather than open reconsideration of the underlying law.