Trump Is ‘Restoring’ the Names of Army Bases That Honored Confederates

President Donald Trump announced in a speech that he plans to rename seven U.S. Army bases back to the names of the Confederate leaders that they originally held.

These include Forts Pickett, Hood, Gordon, Rucker, Polk and A.P. Hill. The Army will also revert back the name of Fort Lee, according to internal communications obtained by NOTUS.

“We won a lot of battles out of those forts,” Trump said Tuesday when announcing the changes during a speech at Fort Bragg. “It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious. I like to keep it going.”

Under Trump’s plan, the Army bases would take on their previous names — but with a twist of history. The bases will now be named after different figures, according to an email obtained by NOTUS.

The names were originally recommended to be changed by a commission established under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. During the Biden administration, these bases were considered “Confederacy-affiliated” and new names were chosen by Congress and recommended to Christine Wormuth, the secretary of the Army at the time.

The commission estimated it would cost $21 million to change all the names. Now, it’ll cost more to revert them back.

President Donald Trump announced in a speech at Fort Bragg Tuesday that he plans to rename seven U.S. Army bases back to the names of the Confederate leaders that they originally held. Alex Brandon/AP

Fort Polk, for example, was renamed as Fort Johnson after a Medal of Honor recipient from World War I who was Black, Sgt. William Henry Johnson, who in France earned the nickname the “Black Death.”

Now it will be named after Silver Star recipient Gen. James H. Polk, reverting the name but associating it with a lesser-known World War II hero. Polk’s Silver Star is the lowest precedence award in the list, according to Army regulations. The Distinguished Service Cross, while lesser known to the public, is only below the Medal of Honor.

Fort Lee will revert back under a Medal of Honor recipient from the Spanish–American War.

Fort Gordon, originally named for Confederate general and former Georgia governor John Brown Gordon, was the last of nine bases to be renamed back in 2023. That name was a relatively easy search for the Army to find a modern replacement.

The fort will now be named after Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon, known among troops and military history aficionados as “Gordy” for his actions during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia. He and his team’s actions would go on to be immortalized in his Medal of Honor narrative, along with the book (and later the movie) “Black Hawk Down.”

The bases will return to their original names: Forts Pickett, Hood, Gordon, Rucker, Polk, Lee and A.P. Hill. Alex Brandon/AP

This isn’t the first time that Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have taken this tactic, announcing the reverting of Fort Bragg back in February after it was changed to Fort Liberty.

“We restored the historic name of this very, very special place,” Trump said during his speech.

The most difficult of the latest renamings was Fort A.P. Hill. Hill was a Virginian Confederate Lt. Gen. whose name was replaced under the Biden administration by Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, an Army combat surgeon in the Civil War.

Fort Walker was the only base named for a woman. She is also the only woman to ever be given the Medal of Honor. Now there just won’t be one.

Instead, the base will be named for three different men: Lt. Col. Edward Hill, 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn and Pvt. Bruce Anderson.

That will allow the Army to name the base Anderson–Pinn–Hill, thus reverting the name. Each of the men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War.

Trump also veered into a series of nakedly political asides during his speech to soldiers Tuesday, breaking from past presidents who traditionally avoided such partisanship when addressing military personnel. In particular, Trump bashed his predecessor, Joe Biden, prompting attendees at one point to boo the former president.

“Do you think this crowd would have showed up for Biden,” Trump said at one point. “I don’t think so.”

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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.