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Friday, September 5, 2025
Trump to rename Department of Defense the ‘Department of War,’ official says
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US President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense the “Department of War,” a White House official says.
The order would authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department, and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications, according to a White House fact sheet.
The move, which would put Trump’s stamp on the government’s biggest organization and likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars, would instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.
Since taking office in January, Trump has set out to rename a range of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and to restore the original names of military bases that were changed after racial justice protests.
Department name changes are rare, and require congressional approval, but Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party’s congressional leaders have shown little appetite for opposing any of Trump’s initiatives.
The US Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War II. The name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the US was focused on preventing wars, according to historians.
Hegseth has said that changing the name is “not just about words — it’s about the warrior ethos.”
The Times of Israel Community.