By: Svetlana Shkolnikova
K. Denise Rucker Krepp was thrilled when her distant Confederate cousin’s name was removed from Fort Rucker in 2023 and disheartened when the Trump administration returned the Army base in Alabama to the name, albeit with a different namesake, this summer.
This fall, Rucker Krepp saw a glimmer of hope in Congress: the House and Senate passed versions of an annual defense policy bill with provisions reversing the Pentagon’s revival of Confederate-era names that a congressionally mandated commission had ordered stripped from military assets.
Fort Rucker, originally honoring the Confederate Army Col. Edmund W. Rucker from 1942 to 2023, could once again be Fort Novosel, in honor of Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Novosel, an Army aviator and Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient.
But the provisions were struck from the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump in December, infuriating lawmakers who had garnered bipartisan support for restoring the commission’s work on at least some of the nine Army bases that had been renamed.
“This is an insult to the African-Americans who wear the uniform, and the 40% of enlisted service members who are minorities,” said Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., the author of the provision in the House’s bill, in a statement.
Rucker Krepp, a Coast Guard veteran who had served as a liaison to the commission and successfully lobbied for the removal in 2020 of a portrait of her great-great-great grandfather and Confederate co-founder Howell Cobb from the U.S. Capitol, was equally aghast.
She had been elated by Strickland’s amendment, sending thank you notes to Strickland and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force general who was one of two Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee to vote for the provision over the summer.
When the Senate passed its version of the bill this fall with an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that overrode the Pentagon’s name changes for three bases in Virginia, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s push to reinstall names associated with the Confederacy had felt inevitable.
“I’m sitting here all fall, going ‘All right, which one are they going to take, the House or the Senate?’ ” Rucker Krepp said. “And then to see the [final] bill come out and them take neither, I’m thinking, ‘What are you guys doing? That doesn’t make any sense.’ ”
Strickland blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for the omission, accusing him of caving to Trump’s threat to veto the bill if the renaming provisions were included. Kaine also faulted Trump. The White House and Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but the White House in September said it “strongly” opposed the measures.
Trump, during the last days of his first term, vetoed the 2021 defense policy bill because it created the Naming Commission, tasked with identifying military assets named for Confederates and offering recommendations for their removal. Congress enacted the legislation by overriding Trump’s veto.
Five months into his second term, Trump announced the restoration of “Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,” arguing “we won a lot of battles out of those forts, it’s no time to change.” The Pentagon, forbidden by law from reverting to Confederate names, developed a workaround by finding veterans with the same last names.
Fort Lee in Virginia, for example, is now named for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo Soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Spanish-American War. Fort Rucker is named after Capt. Edward W. Rucker, a World War I aviator.
Rucker Krepp said the name switch at Fort Rucker made little difference — “you can put one Rucker in and take one out, but it’s clearly a Confederate name.” The Ruckers were prominent slave owners who were deeply intertwined with the history of the Confederacy, she said. “This is about using the name that is synonymous with slavery,” she said.
“Why would we do this? That’s what I keep asking: Why are we doing this?”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee in June that veterans and service members who deployed from places such as Fort Bragg or Fort Benning felt a connection to them, and it was important to uphold such intergenerational bonds.
“This is something we’ve been proud to do, something that’s important for the morale of the Army and those communities appreciate that we’ve returned it back to what it was instead of trying to play this game of erasing names,” he said.
Kaine and Strickland say they are undeterred by their legislative loss in December and will look for additional opportunities to reverse the name changes next year.
“I will continue to evaluate my legislative priorities and fight for the issues that matter most to our service members and their families,” Strickland said. “One of those priorities includes ensuring that service members are not forced to serve at bases that honor Confederate traitors who fought to defend slavery.”
Rucker Krepp said it pained her to think about Black soldiers serving in such an environment. She also felt terrible thinking about the family of Novosel, who was awarded the military’s highest honor for conducting a medical evacuation under fire in Vietnam and had his name removed from Fort Rucker after just two years.
“What I don’t want is people to think that the Confederate families are supporting this — that’s what I think is very important about this as we head into America’s 250th [anniversary] next year,” she said, “There is no joy in me that my name has come back.”