Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has embraced “warfighters” as part of the Pentagon’s identity, simply posted Thursday night on X, “Department of War.”
It would likely cost billions of dollars to change the names of hundreds of Pentagon agencies, their stationary, emblems, plaques and other signage at the Defense Department, along with bases around the world. The expense could put a serious dent into the administration’s efforts to slash Pentagon spending and waste.
But Trump’s effort to rename the department fits in with the administration’s wider reshaping of the federal government, from firing tens of thousands of federal employees to deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington.
The move keeps with the Trump administration’s rapid-fire transformation of much of the post-World War II national security architecture set up by former President Harry Truman. The Trump administration has dramatically slashed the National Security Council that was created in the late 1940s and cut numerous Defense Department agencies.
Trump has brought up the change several times since taking office, including with allies during his press conference at the June NATO summit in The Hague. His push to change the agency’s name has only intensified.
“As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything,” Trump said last month, referencing the two world wars. “We’re going to have to go back to that.”
Hegseth, in a Wednesday interview on Fox News, echoed Trump’s line. “We won World War I, and we won World War II, not with the Department of Defense, but with a War Department, with the Department of War," he said. "As the president has said, we're not just defense, we're offense."
Trump has said he thinks Congress would go along with him. "Defense is too defensive,” he said last month. “And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me like a better name."
Democrats quickly skewered the move. Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) and several others flicked at the irony of such an aggressive action from a president who reportedly craves the world’s most notable award for peace.
“Trump is begging for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Soto said on X. “This should cinch it for him right?”
But the decision will likely land well with some of Trump’s close allies on Capitol Hill. Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) is pushing to make the name change official in defense legislation that will likely come to the House floor next week.
And Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott — a sponsor of legislation to rename the Defense Department with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Steube — urged lawmakers to vote to codify it.
"The U.S. military is the most lethal fighting force on the planet, & restoring the Department of War name reflects our true capabilities to win wars, not just respond to them,” he posted on X.
