Trump threatened to veto NDAA over base names, Rep. Strickland says

WASHINGTON — White House officials told lawmakers in recent days that the president would veto the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act if Congress did not delete House- and Senate-passed language ensuring U.S. military bases do not bear names associated with Confederate officers, the sponsor of one of those provisions said Monday.

The Trump administration also told senior lawmakers the president would veto the NDAA over its collective bargaining protections for Pentagon civilians, a knowledgeable source said Monday.

The provisions on the Confederacy that were a part of both the House and Senate bills were retained in the compromise NDAA that was agreed upon by Republican and Democratic Armed Services leaders and was recently sent to congressional leaders for finishing touches, knowledgeable sources said.

So too were the collective bargaining provisions, they said.

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., did as Trump wished and removed both sets of provisions in the last days of talks over the final NDAA text, which was finalized Sunday, lawmakers confirmed on Monday.

Army base names

On the Civil War issue, Trump had vetoed the fiscal 2021 NDAA over its creation of a commission to rename military facilities and assets that have borne the names of Confederate officers or otherwise paid homage to the Confederacy.

Congress overrode that veto.

Nine major Army bases were renamed in 2023 using the commission’s recommendations.

But this year the Trump administration undid the commission’s work.

The White House veto threats in recent days, which have not previously been reported, show the Confederacy issue still matters to Trump, not to mention the subject of control over the federal civilian workforce.

“The President’s threat to veto the bill over this amendment — as he has done before — only proves that the President and this administration aim to politicize and demoralize every servicemember who chooses to put their life on the line while serving their country,” Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., the author of the House provision on base names, said via email. “Speaker Johnson and the President killed my bipartisan amendment that passed in committee — at the last minute. They are choosing to honor Confederate traitors, who fought to uphold the institution of slavery and lost a war, rather than supporting our servicemembers — 40% of whom are people of color.”

The White House, asked last week if it would veto the NDAA if it contained the provisions requiring that the commission’s non-Confederate names be used, referred a reporter to statements of administration policy on the House and Senate NDAAs that expressed “strong” opposition to the provisions but did not threaten a veto.

A Johnson spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment on whether the speaker had removed the base-naming provision at the White House’s request.

Bipartisan votes

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to change the names of nine Army bases that two years before had seen their names changed in accordance with commission recommendations back to their former Confederate homages.

Hegseth said, though, that the names now would be honoring non-Confederate military heroes who happened to share last names with the Confederates.

For example, Fort Gordon in Georgia was renamed Fort Eisenhower in 2023, but this past June the base name reverted to Fort Gordon — this time, Hegseth said, in honor of Medal of Honor recipient Master Sergeant Gary Gordon.

Eight other bases followed similar patterns. Their formerly Confederate-aligned names, now restored in indirect fashion, are: Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Hood, Fort Lee, Fort Pickett, Fort Polk and Fort Rucker.

The GOP majority Armed Services Committees in both chambers voted earlier this year for NDAAs that would restore in whole or in part the Naming Commission’s recommendations.

The House Armed Services Committee adopted an amendment to its NDAA by Strickland to require all the base names to change to the commission’s recommendations.

The Senate’s version included language backed by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., to restore the bases in Virginia — Forts A.P. Hill, Lee and Pickett — to the names chosen by the commission.

Both provisions made it into the final measure, lawmakers said.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, expressed concern in a statement Monday about “how a number of issues were handled by the Speaker and the White House during final negotiations, disregarding input from committees of jurisdiction and forcing in provisions without four-corner agreement,” which he said “goes against the longstanding tradition of the NDAA negotiations process.”

Smith said Johnson “directed the exclusion of several issues that have bipartisan and bicameral support,” including the Confederacy issue, access to fertility treatments for service members and the collective bargaining issue. The House NDAA had included language by Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., that would bar use of fiscal 2026 funds to implement Trump’s March executive order stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights.

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