Trump plans to sign order renaming DOD

Joey Garrison

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump planned to sign an executive order on Sept. 5 changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” reviving a name that was abandoned during a 1947 Cabinet reorganization.

The move, confirmed by a White House official, is intended to reflect what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has described as the administration’s effort to instill the “warrior ethos” across the armed forces.

Trump suggested the change during remarks to reporters on Aug. 25. “It used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound,” Trump said. “And as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II. We won everything.”

Fox News first reported on Trump’s plans to sign the order. A White House summary of the order obtained by USA TODAY said the action will restore “Department of War” as a secondary name for the Defense Department.

The order authorizes Hegseth to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,”“Department of War,”and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications,

ceremonial contexts and non-statutory documents within the executive branch, according to the White House.

All executive departments and agencies would be required to recognize and accommodate the change to “Department of War” in internal and external communications.

The order further instructs Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions to permanently rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War. “As the president has said, we’re not just defense, we’re offense,” Hegseth said in a Sept. 3 appearance on Fox News. “We’re reestablishing at the department the ‘warrior ethos.’ We want warriors, folks that know how to exact lethality on the enemy. We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defense. We think words and names and titles matter.”

Changing the name again will be costly and require updating signs and letterheads used not only by officials at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, but also military installations around the world.

An effort by former President Joe Biden to rename nine bases that honored the Confederacy and Confederate leaders was set to cost the Army $39 million. That effort was reversed by Hegseth earlier this year.

Critics have said the planned name change is not only costly, but an unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.

This year, one of Trump’s closest congressional allies, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Kentucky, introduced a bill that would make it easier for a president to reorganize and rename agencies.

“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. … Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be,” Trump said in August.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was originally changed to be “politically correct.”

Contributing: Reuters