Workers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers remove the letters for Fort Cavazos in Killeen in June 2025 before it is changed back to Fort Hood. Removing Gen. Richard Cavazos’ name to fulfill a political promise betrays Texas veterans, service members and the Cavazos family, our guest columnist writes.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks next to President Donald Trump on Dec. 2, 2025, at the White House in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration directed historic bases to abandon their newly adopted names, thereby removing heroic military trailblazers and damaging the bonds between the armed forces and the communities around those installations.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth must follow the rule of law, and they cannot exceed their executive authority.
The executive branch cannot ignore federal statutes to execute political maneuvers. Their actions to rename nine military bases appear unconstitutional.
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In the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress created the bipartisan Naming Commission, on which I proudly served as one of eight commissioners. The law directed the Department of Defense to remove all names, symbols and monuments honoring the Confederacy.
Former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin unanimously approved and implemented our recommendations. Yet Trump and Hegseth used legal maneuvering to reverse those changes, exceeding their constitutional authority.
By undoing a binding framework enacted by a bipartisan congressional supermajority, they exceeded the limits of executive power. The executive branch must carry out the laws Congress passes. It cannot rewrite them simply because it disagrees with them.
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Through executive orders and legal workarounds, the Trump administration directed historic bases to abandon their newly adopted names. This move removed heroic military trailblazers and damaged the strong bonds between the armed forces and the communities around those installations.
The heroic trailblazers were selected on merit by the Naming Commission, and each was the first choice of the local civilian and military community for the new name of their base.
This executive overreach hit Texas especially hard.
Fort Hood was lawfully renamed Fort Cavazos in honor of Army Gen. Richard Cavazos, a native Texan, decorated combat commander in Korea and Vietnam, Medal of Honor recipient and the first Hispanic four-star general in U.S. history.
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He embodies the values of a modern, diverse military prepared to fight and win the nation’s wars. Removing his name from the base to fulfill a political promise betrays Texas veterans, service members and the Cavazos family.
The same disregard has also harmed other military families, including the descendants of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Julia Moore, who opposed changing Fort Moore back to Fort Benning in Georgia.
The administration’s actions are restoring a whitewashed version of history across our military institutions. The Pentagon has directed itself to restore the Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery and has restored a large portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee at the West Point Library.
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This portrait features a slave caring for Lee’s horse. Restoring this portrait at the Military Academy directly violates the clear statutory directive to remove military assets that memorialize the Confederacy.
As retired Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, my fellow commissioner, correctly stated, “Honoring Lee undermines the academy’s motto of ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’ ”
The legal justification for filing a federal lawsuit to overturn the base renaming actions by Trump and Hegseth rests on Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous framework in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. Under Youngstown, executive power is at its lowest ebb when the president acts in direct defiance of an express act of Congress.
If Congress refuses to file a federal lawsuit to defend its constitutional power of the purse and legislative supremacy, then a broad coalition of military and civilian stakeholders must step forward.
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Veterans service organizations, civil rights organizations, military and civilian employees stationed at these bases, and affected military families possess the strong legal standing required to challenge these actions.
They can successfully argue that the administration’s costly and chaotic renaming reversals inflict direct harm on their communities, to our Constitution and to our country.
We must honor true American heroes.
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We must have strict adherence to the law. We must not allow the Pentagon to become a playground for political revisionism that ignores congressional mandates.
A federal lawsuit is necessary. A lawsuit can stop this executive overreach, ensuring our military remains focused on defending the Constitution.
Lawrence Guzman Romo was a commissioner of the Naming Commission and director of the U.S. Selective Service System, and he is LULAC’s national vice president for veterans.
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