President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he was restoring the names of Confederate officers to seven U.S. military bases. Trump made the announcement during a speech at Fort Bragg after watching a demonstration that includes 600 paratroopers landing on a runway and earth-shaking artillery barrages. The names would be restored to Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Polk in Louisiana and three bases in Virginia: Fort AP Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Robert E. Lee. The Army had changed those names during the Biden Administration, based on a 2022 study completed by the Pentagon’s Naming Commission that recommended new titles for military installations that had been named after leaders of the Confederacy. But discussion of changing the names had predated Biden’s presidency. Many of those bases located in the South were given Confederate names in the middle of the 20th Century, at a time when southern states were still restricting the voting and assembly rights of Black Americans through Jim Crow laws.

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“We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious. I like to keep it going, right? I’m very superstitious. We want to keep it going,” Trump told soldiers of the XVIII Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command about his decision to restore the names of Confederate officers that led troops to preserve slavery in the southern states during the Civil War.

Trump said his staff suggested he wait until Saturday to make the announcement, when Trump plans to preside over a military parade in Washington, D.C. marking the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army. Trump said he couldn’t wait and wanted to reveal the restoration of the Confederate names while he was visiting Fort Bragg. “I can’t wait. I got to talk to my friends here today,” Trump said.

Fort Bragg is home to more than 50,000 troops and is one of the largest military bases on the planet. In 1918, it was initially named for Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slave owner. The Pentagon renamed it Fort Liberty in 2023. When Trump’s new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, took office in February 2025, he ordered the base to be named after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg who was recognized for his courage during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

Democratic Rep. Norma Torres, who represents parts of Los Angeles County, said today that her “constituents are very scared” of the sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions taking place in communities there.

“They don’t want to get caught up in a situation where ICE is profiling and detaining them because of the color of their skin,” Torres said on MSNBC’s “Way Too Early.”

Torres added that she and other Democratic members were barred from entering an ICE facility in downtown LA.

“It’s not supposed to work this way. In the last Trump administration we made sure we changed the law so members of Congress would not be blocked from entering and doing oversight. … Imagine if your loved one just didn’t come home one day and you tried to locate them but ICE is playing a shell game, transferring them from one location to another because they aren’t interest in due process.”

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Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, has had to navigate a recognition of presidential power while defending the institution’s autonomy.

In a challenge to President Trump, the Smithsonian said on Monday that it retained the power over personnel decisions, a statement that came in the wake of the president’s announcement that he was firing Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery.

“All personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board,” said a statement from the Smithsonian, which oversees that museum and 20 others, as well as libraries, research centers and the National Zoo. “Lonnie G. Bunch, the secretary, has the support of the Board of Regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.”

The statement came hours after the Board of Regents, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed the president’s announcement at a quarterly meeting. When Mr. Trump said 10 days ago that he had fired Ms. Sajet, he called her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Sajet was not mentioned in the Smithsonian’s statement. But the board said it was asking Mr. Bunch to take steps to ensure the institution’s nonpartisan nature.

“The Smithsonian must be a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans,” the statement said. “The Board of Regents is committed to ensuring that the Smithsonian is a beacon of scholarship free from political or partisan influence, and we recognize that our institution can and must do more to further these foundational values.”

The statement said the board had directed Mr. Bunch to articulate expectations to museum directors about what is displayed in their institutions and to give them time to make any changes needed “to ensure unbiased content.”

“This is an interim measure and does not rule out potential personnel actions,” a Smithsonian spokesman said in an email.

Since Mr. Trump retook office in January, his administration has made a concerted effort to exert influence over cultural matters in Washington. The president is now chairman of the board at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where an ally has taken over as the interim director.

And in a recent executive order, Mr. Trump called on Mr. Vance to overhaul the Smithsonian with the help of Congress. In his order, the president described a “revisionist movement” across the country that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he had fired Ms. Sajet referred to her support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The White House also provided to The New York Times a list of grievances that it says led to the president’s action, outlining what it described as Ms. Sajet’s acts of partisanship and public comments about racial and gender inequality in America.

In an email to Smithsonian employees on Monday night, Mr. Bunch wrote that he wanted the “institution to look at the unvarnished self” by examining its exhibitions, programs and presentations.

“While the vast majority of our content is rooted in meticulous research and thoughtful analysis of history and facts, we recognize that, on occasion, some of our work has not aligned with our institutional values of scholarship, even-handedness and nonpartisanship,” he wrote, without providing any specific examples. “For that, we must all work to do better.”

Before thanking the president and Congress for their commitment to the Smithsonian, Mr. Bunch added that he would evaluate “the need for any changes to policies, procedures or personnel.”

Ms. Sajet has not responded to requests for comment since Mr. Trump’s announcement but other museum professionals have defended her programming at the National Portrait Gallery as being in line with an effort to expand the portfolio of whose histories are exhibited there.

The Smithsonian has long operated as independent of the executive branch, and the legal authority of the president to fire Ms. Sajet is questionable, according to the institution’s governing documents. The Board of Regents met last week and again on Monday, when the panel voted to restate its autonomy in operating the cultural complex.

Image The headquarters of the Smithsonian Institution, known as “The Castle.” It is currently closed for renovations. Credit… Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The fight over Ms. Sajet’s tenure has further complicated matters for Mr. Bunch, who was already under pressure to navigate a recognition of presidential power while defending the institution’s autonomy. Created by Congress as a trust to be administered by the board and the secretary, the institution receives two-thirds of its $1 billion in annual funding from the federal government.

The Smithsonian’s silence after Mr. Trump’s announcement about Ms. Sajet, the first woman to lead the National Portrait Gallery, appeared to signal a reluctance to challenge the president. But the board on Monday reacted in a way that, if not a complete statement of support for Ms. Sajet, was a clear effort by the institution to reassert its autonomy.

Mr. Bunch’s own standing remains at some risk, given the president’s interest in directing matters at the Smithsonian and his aversion to diversity and inclusion efforts. Appointed secretary by the Smithsonian board during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Bunch made his reputation as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, whose exhibits include a review of the country’s legacy of slavery.

In April, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told The Times: “Lonnie Bunch is a Democrat donor and rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book. Fortunately, he, along with his garbage book, are complete failures.”

In that 2019 book, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump,” Mr. Bunch detailed a museum tour with Mr. Trump that included an exhibit describing the roles that countries like Portugal, England and the Netherlands played in the slave trade.

Mr. Trump said simply, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands,” the book reported.

“All I could say was let’s continue walking,” Mr. Bunch wrote.

Before joining the Smithsonian as a director in 2013, Ms. Sajet, 60, a Nigerian-born museum professional who had been raised in Australia and is a citizen of the Netherlands, had served in a number of positions in Pennsylvania. In her last post there, she served for six years as president and chief executive at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

In its list of grievances, the White House focused not on her résumé as a museum professional, but on remarks she made and exhibitions she had been associated with while leading the National Portrait Gallery.

It cited a 2015 article in The Georgetowner in which Ms. Sajet said she was “interested in the concept of outsiders, of a different kind of categories, including more women, more minorities.” The list also notes that in 2013 the National Portrait Gallery determined that “50 percent of all money spent on art would support diverse artists and portrait subjects.” (During its 50th anniversary in 2018, the museum celebrated that policy as one of its achievements.)

Mr. Trump has also been unhappy with how he has been represented in the museum with a photograph whose caption mentions that he was “impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021,” though it adds that “he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.” (The museum’s commissioned portraits are not displayed until a president leaves office.)

The wall text also notes: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election.”

Joe Morelle, the leading Democrat on the House Administration Committee, and Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, have argued for the Smithsonian’s independence. In a statement, they have disputed Mr. Trump’s power to fire employees of the Smithsonian, calling any such effort “illegal.”

The Smithsonian is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents, which includes three members of Congress appointed by the House and three by the Senate. Nine regents are nominated by the board and appointed for a six-year term by a joint resolution signed by the president. The vice president and chief justice of the United States also serve on the board.

Independent of any personnel maneuvers, the Smithsonian is also confronting the president’s proposed 12 percent cut to its budget. The proposed cuts were a focal point of a meeting Ms. Sajet convened on Tuesday afternoon with the National Portrait Gallery’s board of commissioners. At the meeting, Ms. Sajet depicted Mr. Trump’s decision to fire her as part of the White House’s broader efforts to target the Smithsonian.

The proposed budget cuts would affect other museums under the Smithsonian’s umbrella, such as the planned National Museum of the American Latino, she said, which would need to reduce its staff from 35 employees to about six people. The Anacostia Community Museum would completely lose its funding, she added, and its programming would be folded into the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“The big hit is to facilities,” Ms. Sajet said in a video conference call with commissioners. She explained that such budget reductions would hit the Smithsonian’s infrastructure the hardest. “That’s maintaining our museums, storage, upgrades and, you know, all the care that goes into it.”

At the meeting, Ms. Sajet indicated that she viewed her own situation as collateral damage in the president’s effort to reshape the Smithsonian. “I was just a piece of it,” she said.

President Trump, during a speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., said on Tuesday that he would restore the names of all Army bases that were named for Confederate generals but were ordered changed by Congress in the waning days of his first administration.

His move skirts the law mandating the removal of Confederate symbols from the military through the same maneuver used to restore the name of Fort Bragg, which was briefly renamed Fort Liberty. In a statement, the Army said it would “take immediate action” to restore the old names of the bases originally honoring Confederates, but the base names would instead honor other American soldiers with similar names and initials.

For example, Fort Eisenhower in Georgia, honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower — who led the D-Day landings during World War II — would revert to the name Fort Gordon, once honoring John Brown Gordon, the Confederate slave owner and suspected Ku Klux Klan member. This time around, however, the Army said the base would instead honor Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.

Mr. Trump, however, contradicted that explanation in his announcement, at one point saying that the Army would be “restoring” the name of one Army base in Virginia — Fort Gregg-Adams — to “Fort Robert E. Lee,” previously named for the commander of the Confederate army. The Army said in its statement that the base would be renamed to honor Pvt. Fitz Lee, a member of the all-Black Buffalo Soldiers who was awarded a Medal of Honor after serving in the Spanish-American War.

Trump orders Confederate names like Robert E. Lee back on US military bases in reversal of Biden purge

The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a controversial move by reinstating the name of Fort Bragg.

Trump spoke at Fort Bragg on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army (Image: AP )

President Donald Trump announced that he will restore the names of Fort Robert E. Lee and six other military bases honoring several Confederate war leaders, while speaking at Fort Bragg on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army amid the deployment of the National Guard forces in Los Angeles to quell immigration protests.

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On Tuesday morning, Trump took to Truth Social to announce the event, saying, “Will be going to Fort Bragg today. Big speech, amazing crowd! See you later!!! DJT.”

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At the event, Trump said, “For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill, and Fort Robert E Lee.”

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“We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious, you know, I like to keep it going, right? I’m very superstitious,” he said.

“We want to keep it going. So that’s a big story,” Trump added.

The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a controversial move by signing an order to reinstate the original name of the North Carolina U.S. military base, reverting back to being named after a Confederate general in February.

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Hegseth announced the renaming of the North Carolina US military base back to Fort Bragg, erasing its former rebranding as Fort Liberty in 2023.

“Bragg is back! ” exclaimed Hegseth on social platform X upon signing off on the reversal.

The fort’s namesake, Gen. Braxton Bragg of Warrenton, North Carolina, was a slave owner and a Confederate general recognized for his military defeats that helped lead to the end of the Confederacy.

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Yet Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot dispelled the notion that the change honors the controversial figure, stating that Hegseth is actually commemorating Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a distinguished World War II veteran who was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his valor in the Battle of the Bulge.

“This change underscores the installation’s legacy of recognizing those who have demonstrated extraordinary service and sacrifice for the nation,” stated Ullyot.

Former President Joe Biden had renamed the bases honoring Confederates in 2023, changing the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty.

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Located near Fayetteville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg is the headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and home to Green Berets and the Rangers.

The Tuesday speech will be followed by a $45 million military parade on Saturday in Washington, D.C., with 130 vehicles and more than 7,000 soldiers. The parade coincides with Trump’s 79th birthday.

Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll attended the event alongside service members, veterans, and their families.