The Fight Over Renaming Military Posts, Explained

Earlier this month Fort Bragg, the largest military post in the country, became Fort Liberty. While campaigning in North Carolina, where the base is located, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared that as president he would restore the old name. During his own visit to the Tar Heel state, former Vice President Mike Pence also announced that he supported a reversal. Both candidates said their stance was based on opposition to “political correctness.”

Why were the names changed to begin with, and why is there backlash brewing now? Would the next president even have the power to reverse the change? 

The process.

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the racial unrest that followed, protesters around the country took to the streets to vandalize monuments and statues commemorating Confederate soldiers. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced an amendment to the annual defense spending bill that would rename military assets that honored the Confederacy, she described the amendment as “one step toward addressing systemic racism.”