U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., was one of several lawmakers who grilled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s decision to revert seven military bases to their previous names.

Under former President Joe Biden, the Defense Department changed the names of several military bases that honored Confederate figures in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests.

But Hegseth claimed Wednesday that service members had been the one’s urging him to change them back.

“There’s a legacy, and there’s a connection to those places,” he said.

“What we’re looking at is erasing history, erasing names, erasing base names that service people are tired to.”

“Ask people that serve at Fort Bragg or Fort Benning if they like the fact that the names have been returned,” he continued.

“To a man and to a woman and they will tell you, thank God we’re back to Fort Bragg.”

But one woman, Duckworth, said she did not share this opinion of the base she said was named for a “failed Confederate traitor.”

“You said just now…that to a man and to a woman we would rather be associated with the old confederate names,” she said.

“Well, I am one of those women. I served at Fort Rucker, Alabama, a base that was named for a traitor who took arms against the United States of America and led troops who killed Americans.”

Duckworth entered the Illinois Army National Guard in 1996 and was deployed to Iraq in 2004.

She became the first American female double amputee from the Iraq War after the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, according to her biography.

She received a Purple Heart on December 3, 2004, and was promoted to the rank of major on December 21 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she was also presented with an Air Medal and Army Commendation Medal.

She retired from the Illinois Army National Guard in October 2014 as a lieutenant colonel, according to her biography.

“I’d rather be associated with Mike Novosel than a failed confederate traitor,” she said Wednesday.

Fort Rucker was changed to Fort Novosel after Enterprise resident Michael Novosel Sr.

Novosel was a military aviator for more than 40 years and received the highest military honor for his service in Vietnam.

He was credited with helping to down several German planes near Luneville, France on June 13, 1918.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross along with 21 other officers and enlisted men, according to the project. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm.

Although the base will be returning to its original name, representatives say it will now be named in honor of Captain Edward W. Rucker, an aviator in the U.S Army Air Service who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism during a mission near Luneville, France on June 13, 1918, during World War I.

It was originally named in honor of Confederate Col. Edmund W. Rucker, a brigade commander during the Civil War.

“This is something we’ve been proud to do, something that’s important to morale for the Army, and something that those communities appreciate that we’ve returned it back to what it was instead of trying to play this game of erasing names,” Hegseth said Wednesday.