U.S. President Donald Trump speaks aft signing an enforcement order, arsenic U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth look on, successful the Oval Office astatine the White House successful Washington, D.C., U.S., August 25, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
President Donald Trump plans to motion an enforcement bid Friday to rebrand the Department of Defense arsenic the Department of War, his latest effort to task an representation of toughness for America's military.
The Republican president can't formally alteration the sanction without legislation, which his medication would petition from Congress. In the meantime, Trump volition authorize the Pentagon to usage "secondary titles" truthful the section tin spell by its archetypal name.
The plans were disclosed by a White House official, who requested anonymity up of the nationalist announcement, and elaborate successful a White House information sheet.
The Department of War was created successful 1789, the aforesaid twelvemonth that the U.S. Constitution took effect. It was renamed by instrumentality successful 1947, 2 years aft the extremity of World War II.
Pentagon main Pete Hegseth posted "DEPARTMENT OF WAR" connected societal media aft the enforcement bid was initially reported by Fox News.
Trump and Hegseth person agelong talked astir changing the name, and Hegseth adjacent created a societal media canvass connected the taxable successful March.
Since then, helium has hinted that his rubric arsenic defence caput whitethorn not beryllium imperishable astatine aggregate nationalist events, including a code astatine Fort Benning, Georgia, connected Thursday. He told an auditorium afloat of soldiers that it "may beryllium a somewhat antithetic rubric tomorrow."
In August, Trump told reporters that "everybody likes that we had an unbelievable past of triumph erstwhile it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense."
When confronted with the anticipation that making the sanction alteration would necessitate an enactment of Congress, Trump told reporters that "we're conscionable going to bash it."
"I'm definite Congress volition spell on if we request that," helium added.
The determination is conscionable the latest successful a agelong enactment of taste changes Hegseth has made to the Pentagon since taking bureau astatine the opening of the year.
Early successful his tenure, Hegseth pushed hard to destruct what helium saw arsenic the impacts of "woke culture" connected the subject by not lone ridding the section of diverseness programs but scrubbing libraries and websites of worldly deemed to beryllium divisive.
The effect was the removal and reappraisal of hundreds of books successful the subject academies, which ended up including titles connected the Holocaust and a Maya Angelou memoir. It besides resulted successful the removal disconnected thousands of websites honoring contributions by women and number groups.
"I deliberation the president and the caput person been precise wide connected this — that anybody that says successful the Department of Defense that diverseness is our spot is, is frankly, incorrect," Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters successful March.
Hegseth has besides presided implicit the removal of each transgender troops from the subject pursuing an enforcement bid from Trump done a process that immoderate person described arsenic "dehumanizing" oregon "open cruelty."
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