Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s move to rename Fort Bragg appears to be his latest effort to roll back Biden-administration diversity policies for the military.

On Monday, a memo from Hegseth appeared in federal court that prohibits the armed services from accepting recruits who are transgender. He also ordered a pause in medical treatment for service members who have gender dysphoria.

Later that day, Hegseth announced that Fort Liberty’s name would be changed back to Fort Bragg – in honor of a World War II hero, not the Confederate general who had been its original namesake.

“Bragg is back,” Hegseth told reporters while on a trip to Germany on Tuesday. “It’s about that legacy. It’s about the connection to the community, to those who served.”

“We’re not done there,” he said of other bases and roads that have been similarly renamed.

More:Pentagon revives ban on transgender troops joining U.S. military

Why did the Biden administration change the name?

A commission created by Congress during the Biden administration recommended changing the names of bases and other monuments honoring Confederate soldiers who had waged the Civil War against the United States. Under the law that led to the commission’s creation, Hegseth has the authority to change base names if he chooses to honor a person who did not serve in the Confederacy.

The action “violates the spirit of the law but not the law itself,” Ty Seidule, a retired Army general and the former vice chair of the naming commission, said in an email. Seidule said he was “surprised” Hegseth “did not stick with the name the local community united around,” including a military Gold Star mother who led the effort.

A congressional source who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that Hegseth has the ability to change the name because the law prohibits the Defense secretary from naming a military asset after a Confederate soldier.

Why is Hegseth changing the names back to Fort Bragg and Fort Benning?

Through the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, the annual defense policy bill, Congress appointed a commission to recommend new names for bases, streets and other monuments that bore the names of Confederate soldiers who committed treason and fought against U.S. soldiers in the Civil War.

Trump, in his first term, vetoed the must-pass Defense bill that sets defense policy because of the commission. Bi-partisan majorities in the House and Senate overrode his veto.

The base was officially renamed in 2023. Costs to update its name were estimated at $8 million at the time. It’s unclear how much it might cost the military to change the name again.

Hegseth already signaled his intention to revert the original, Confederate names of two bases.

In some of his first remarks as Defense secretary, Hegseth referred to Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, a Georgia base renamed Fort Moore, pointedly using their original Confederate namesakes.

More:Erasing the Confederacy: Army changes names of iconic Fort Hood and Fort Benning bases

In a podcast interview last year, Hegseth said, “there’s also a generational link that breaks when you rename Benning and Bragg,” calling the new names “garbage.”

Trump also promised during the campaign that he would rename the bases, vowing at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to Fort Liberty, that “we’re going to do everything we can, we’re going to get it back.”

His plans to revert the bases’ names have drawn criticism from lawmakers across the aisle. Republican Rep. Don Bacon, of Nebraska, told POLITICO, “The law was passed, it’s not going to go backward.”

Who were the bases originally named after?

Fort Moore was renamed in honor of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. Lt. Gen. Moore was highly decorated for his heroism during the battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, as depicted in the book and film, “We Were Soldiers Once…and Young.”

Julia Moore’s support of families of troops killed in action prompted the Army to change the way it makes death notifications.

Like Bragg, Camp Benning was built in 1918. Its mission was to provide basic training for soldiers deploying in World War I. The Army named the base in honor of Henry Benning, a lawyer and senior Confederate officer whom the commission, on the Army’s website, labeled an “ardent secessionist.”

“He is on record as saying that he would rather be stricken with illness and starvation than see slaves liberated and given equality as citizens,” the commission report said. “As the commander of the Benning Brigade, he fought in many of the battles throughout the war. Heartbroken over the Confederacy’s defeat, he was one of the last officers to lead his men to the surrender ceremony in 1865.”

Some Army posts in the South, as well as streets and buildings on installations like West Point in the North, bore the names of Confederate officers like Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In the South, several forts sprung up during the massive mobilization for World War I. Many were given names honoring Confederate generals in an apparent effort at post-Civil War reconciliation.

“It was also the height of the Jim Crow Laws in the South, so there was no consideration for the feelings of African Americans who had to serve at bases named after men who fought to defend slavery,” according to the Pentagon’s website.

Nothing to Bragg about

Fort Liberty began as Camp Bragg in 1918 as an Army artillery training ground. It was named after Braxton Bragg, who, according to the commission charged with changing base names, was “a slave-owning plantation owner and senior Confederate Army officer.”

Bragg is “considered one of the worst generals of the Civil War,” according to the commission. “Most of the battles he was involved in ended in defeat and resulted in tremendous losses for the Confederate Army” and were “highly consequential to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.”

“Bragg was temperamental, a harsh disciplinarian, and widely disliked in the pre-Civil War U.S. Army and within the Confederate Army by peers and subordinates alike throughout his career,” according to the commission.

Hegseth’s decision to name the base after Roland Bragg, not for the Confederate general, could be seen as an admission that Braxton Bragg was undeserving, said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor and expert on civil-military relations.

Hegseth has made clear that “he understands the Department of Defense faces a daunting array of challenges and I doubt that he thinks those problems will be fixed merely by changing names and pronouns,” Feaver said. “The hard work of defense reform is still ahead.”