WASHINGTON D.C. – President Donald Trump recently signed an order that calls for a return of Confederate monuments—including the names of military installations—and targets cultural institutions that represent U.S. history, according to a recent report by the New Republic.
The New Republic reports Trump’s executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity in America” targets the nation’s cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian museum and National Zoo, ordering for the termination of “any activity he sees as ‘anti-American ideology.’”
The New Republic wrote a less publicized part of the directive that calls for the Secretary of the Interior to review and potentially restore public monuments, and military bases, including those of Confederate figures like Robert E. Lee, General Braxton Bragg and Albert Pike.
At least nine military posts have received new names since 2020 as part of the Department of Defense’s initiative to redesignate Army bases named after Confederate soldiers. Many of the new names honor Civil War veterans, Medal of Honor recipients and leaders who have made significant contributions to the United States Army, wrote ABC News.
But now, according to the directive, the goal is to “determine whether…public monuments…within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
These public properties, reports New Republic, were initially destroyed on January 1, 2020, after the Black Lives Matter protests in order to confront and honor the legacy of slavery, racism, and white supremacy that many of these figures represent.
The New Republic cites Georgetown University history professor Chandra Manning, who told the Washington Post this order’s claims that confronting the full story of America’s past is “an ideological plot to cast the United states in a negative light testifies to a stunningly brittle insecurity about our nation and its past.”
What ever happened to changing the name of Fort Bragg, CA to “Noyo”? I thought that was a done deal.