US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered military base Fort Liberty, located in North Carolina, be reverted to Fort Bragg.

The order contravenes a measure backed in Congress that led to the renaming of the army base in 2023, which was part of a wider initiative to rename military installations commemorating figures linked to the Confederacy.

Hegseth said the base will now be named after a World War Two veteran, Pte Roland L Bragg, rather than its original namesake, Gen Braxton Bragg, a Confederate soldier who lost a number of battles in the American Civil War.

“That’s right, Bragg is back,” Hegseth said during the signing, in a video posted on his social media account.

Hegseth signed the directive while flying to Europe on a military plane on Monday.

“The new name pays tribute to Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge,” a statement by defence department press secretary John Ullyot said.

“This change underscores the installation’s legacy of recognizing those who have demonstrated extraordinary service and sacrifice for the nation,” he added.

The move fulfils a pledge made by President Donald Trump during his campaign to return to office.

During a rally in North Carolina last year, Trump criticised the name change, telling a crowd of supporters near the base: “we’re gonna get it back. We’re gonna bring our country back”.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, had also previously expressed his dissatisfaction over the initial name change to Fort Liberty.

While promoting his book War on Warriors, published last year, he said: “We should change it back, because legacy matters. My uncle served at Bragg. I served at Bragg. It breaks a generational link.”

While Hegseth said Fort Bragg now had a new namesake, a 2022 Congressional commission report that originally led to the base’s renaming purposefully decided not to use the same last names as Confederate figures in renaming initiatives.

The report noted that Gen Braxton Bragg was a slave-owning plantation owner and “one of the worst generals of the Civil War”.

Fort Bragg was one of nine bases that the Naming Commission suggested be renamed.

The commission was added to a defence bill in 2020. Trump vetoed the bill, but the House and Senate overrode his veto.

Fort Bragg officially became Fort Liberty during a ceremony in June 2023.

The army base is home to about 52,000 personnel and is known for being able to rapidly deploy troops overseas.

Attributed to DOD Press Secretary John Ullyot.

Fogel has spent more than three years detained in Russia after being sentenced to 14 years in penal colony for drug trafficking. Fogel had been arrested for possessing medical marijuana, which was prescribed by a doctor in the United States.

According to the AP, Fogel is expected to be reunited with his family by the end of the day.

“Today, President Donald J. Trump and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are able to announce that Mr. Witkoff is leaving Russian airspace with Marc Fogel, an American who was detained by Russia,” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said in a statement. 

“President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the President’s advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine,” Waltz added. 

Marc Fogel, a history teacher from Pennsylvania, was serving a 14-year prison sentence after his arrest in August 2021 at a Russian airport for being in possession of drugs, which his family and supporters said were medically prescribed marijuana.

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Marc Fogel, right, with his family. (Photos courtesy Ellen Keelan and Lisa Hyland)

Fogel, 63, was designated as wrongfully detained by the U.S. government. In the nine years leading up to his arrest, he was teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow.

Fogel’s relatives told the Associated Press they were “beyond grateful, relieved and overwhelmed” that he was coming home.

“This has been the darkest and most painful period of our lives, but today, we begin to heal,” they said. “For the first time in years, our family can look forward to the future with hope.”

Waltz also said in his statement that “Since President Trump’s swearing-in, he has successfully secured the release of Americans detained around the world, and President Trump will continue until all Americans being held are returned to the United States.

“By tonight, Marc Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership,” Waltz added.

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Former CIA station chief and Fox News contributor Dan Hoffman called the release Tuesday a “major foreign policy success.

“Any time we are able to extract one of our citizens from behind enemy lines in Russia, good on the administration for doing this. Steven Witkoff has got a lot on his plate right now dealing with the Middle East and it’s incredibly impressive to me that on top of that, he was able to secure the release of Marc Fogel,” Hoffman told Fox News’ “America Reports.”

Fogel had been left out of a massive prisoner swap in August 2024 that freed multiple Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and corporate security executive Paul Whelan.

Fogel was a 1984 graduate of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 

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“After graduating from IUP, Marc devoted his life – 36 years – to education,” the school’s president, Michael Driscoll, wrote last year. “He taught history courses at schools attended by children of U.S. diplomats in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman, and Malaysia.”

Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

The act, reintroduced by Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy, is intended to amend the National Voter Registration Act to ensure that all people registering to vote are U.S. citizens. It would require people to present in-person documentation as proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Much of the documentation listed under the SAVE Act is based on having a birth certificate that matches the person registering to vote. However, as many as 69 million married women in the United States have changed their legal name since getting married, meaning their name does not match their birth certificate, per the Center for American Progress.

Why It Matters

The United States is a democracy, meaning all citizens, with the exception of children and some felons, have the right to vote. The SAVE Act would make it significantly harder for married women, as well as many other members of the population, to exercise their right to vote as Americans.

If they do not have a passport, which nearly 146 million people in the U.S. do not have, it will be much more difficult for those who have changed their name to register to vote under the SAVE Act.

It is also already illegal to vote as a noncitizen, and several measures, including providing a social security number to register, matching voter rolls to federal data, and, in many places, bringing voter ID to the polls, are in place across the country to ensure only citizens can cast a ballot.

What To Know

The SAVE Act lists several types of documentation that would be accepted, including a form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005, a valid United States passport, valid military ID, forms of Tribal identification, and proof of naturalization. Many of these forms of ID, other than a passport, either include a birth certificate or must be presented alongside a birth certificate.

The SAVE Act does not include proof of name change or a marriage certificate as acceptable proof of identity. This is vital for married women with a birth certificate that does not match their current legal name.

Roy told Newsweek on Tuesday: “The legislation provides myriad ways for people to prove citizenship and explicitly directs states to establish a process for individuals to register to vote if there are discrepancies in their proof of citizenship documents due to something like a name change.”

He pointed to a clause in the SAVE Act that leaves it up to each state to establish a process for applicants to “provide additional documentation to the appropriate election official of the State as may be necessary to establish that the applicant is a citizen of the United States in the event of a discrepancy with respect to the applicant’s documentary proof of United States citizenship.”

A Republican representative introduced the act. However, if passed, it may reduce voting opportunities for Republicans, as a Pew study found that more Republican than Democratic women choose to change their name after getting married.

The SAVE Act also accepts valid passports as proof of ID. The states with the fewest number of people with passports are West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. All of these states voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.

Election workers face the threat of prison time under the SAVE Act, as it would impose a five-year prison sentence on election workers who register people to vote without proper documentation, regardless of whether that person is a U.S. citizen.

Roy has claimed that elections have been “hijacked” by foreigners, but the U.S. has minuscule levels of noncitizen voting and harsh punishments, including deportation for noncitizens who do try to vote.

An audit from Georgia counties in 2024 found that 20 noncitizens, out of Georgia’s 8.4 million registered voters, had attempted to vote. That is 0.00024 percent of the state’s voter list. All 20 were referred to law enforcement and had zero effect on the election.

What People Are Saying

Campaign Legal Center, in an analysis: “More than 21 million Americans are unable to access the additional documents that would be required to register to vote under the SAVE Act. People of color, married people who have changed their names, as well as young and elderly people are more likely to have difficulty in accessing these documents…We already have strict laws in place to protect the security of our elections. The right to vote is a basic American freedom, and our elected officials should be working to protect that right, not restrict it.”

Representative Chip Roy in a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday: “This is absurd armchair speculation being spun up by media outlets who care more about clicks than reality…This bill isn’t being attacked because it’ll exclude citizens from voting — it won’t. It’s being attacked because the policy is wildly popular with the American people, its opponents want and need illegals to vote, and they’ll use anything they can to attack it.”

Cleta Mitchell, founder of the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, in a press release: “America’s elections must be lawful, fair, and free from fraud. The SAVE Act is a vital safeguard to ensure that only citizens vote in our elections—because every illegal ballot cancels out the voice of a lawful citizen voter…The integrity of our elections—and the trust of the American people in our elections—depend on it.”

Center for American Progress, in a January 31 article: “The only Americans who stand to benefit from the SAVE Act are out-of-touch politicians willing to trample on the rights of millions of citizens, including their own constituents, in order to score a few political points with the media and the administration.”

What Happens Next

The bill was introduced in July 2024 but failed to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate. Now, with Republicans in charge of both congressional chambers and the White House, the SAVE Act will likely make its way into law.

If the bill passes it is likely to have little effect on noncitizens voting, as there are so few cases of noncitizens trying to vote, but it will make it significantly harder for Americans to be able to register to vote.

Update 2/11/25, 3:06 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include comment from Representative Chip Roy.