Trump to sign executive order renaming Pentagon the Department of War
Source: CNN Politics
Updated Sep 4, 2025, 7:13 PM ET
PUBLISHED Sep 4, 2025, 6:33 PM ET
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Friday that will change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War, a White House official told CNN.
It’s a move that the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have previewed in recent days, including Trump in the Oval Office last week when he told reporters his administration was going to “change the name.”
“We call it the Department of Defense, but between us, I think we’re gonna change the name,” the president told reporters on August 25.
“We won the World War 1, World War 2 - it was called the Department of War, and to me, that’s really what it is. Defense is a part of that, but I have a feeling we’re gonna be changing.” The news about Friday’s order was first reported by Fox News.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/department-of-war-trump-executive-order
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bucolic_frolic
(52,385 posts)Let's go backward. To suit Donald Trump.
Zorro
(17,876 posts)
Farmer-Rick
(12,072 posts)It will be the Nobel War Prize. Yeah, he really can't but he doesn't know it.
eringer
(490 posts)W made all the organizations in the Navy to change their names because there is only one “Commander in Chief”. Hence no more Cincs in the Navy. Cost a few million to change all the stationary and signage. Now it’s the convicted felon doing a one up on him except this time it’s gonna be billions.
jmowreader
(52,662 posts)
malthaussen
(18,290 posts)That they would choose now to re-name it is indicative of something, but it's still just an empty set of words.
-- Mal
milestogo
(21,763 posts)and all the wars he has ended, but that would be too Orwellian.
twodogsbarking
(15,723 posts)
llmart
(16,812 posts)
wiggs
(8,402 posts)
DBoon
(24,282 posts)... the Department of Death and Pillage
bluedigger
(17,319 posts)Think of all the new t shirt sales - kind of like those stupid ass yellow Red Sox uniforms.
GB_RN
(3,439 posts)Your EO is worth less than shitting in your hand: Only action by Congress can rename a cabinet level organization.
OTOH, the Supine 6 will probably say that the Constitution and legal statutes don’t mean what the words actually mean. So much for “originalism,” eh? 🤦♂️
DallasNE
(7,871 posts)In order to get SCOTUS to buy off on a permanent emergency to allow him to continue his tariffs by Executive Order policy. So he signs another Executive Order to name a department of government the War Department. Kills two birds with one stone.
Aussie105
(7,198 posts)Can someone take the Godlike, or Kinglike power of the Presidential sharpie away from him, and future Presidents, before he really does something really, really stupid?
Some future historian needs to go through all the EOs he has scribbled on with his sharpie, and judge the good and bad of each.
HarryM
(427 posts)AverageOldGuy
(2,948 posts). . . I served 1967-1995, Army. I spent a year in the bush in a place called Vietnam -- you may have seen a paragraph or two in your history books about it -- with a 60-lb rucksack on my back and an M-16 in my hand and I used both of them damn near every day.
Fucking Pete Hogsbreath is a former National Guard major who spent a year in Iraq as a platoon leader whose platoon's mission was base defense -- he was in the rear with the beer, he was what we in the Nam called a REMF -- a Rear Echelon MuthahFukah. And now this POS is SECDEF. He was never promoted above major because his unit knew what an incompetent asshole he is.
And it's this PIS who wants us to believe he is a "warrior?" I would tell you what I really think but I'd be banned by DU and by my ISP.
orangecrush
(26,691 posts)jmowreader
(52,662 posts)It wasn't until Platoon Leader Hegseth transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve that they pinned a leaf on him.
So, what is the Individual Ready Reserve? When you join the military you incur an eight-year military commitment. Unless you decide you like it and want to be a career Soldier/Sailor/Airman/Marine/Guardian, you'll get out of the service at somewhere between two and four years depending on what your contract reads. They gotta have SOMETHING to do with you for the years between your Expiration of Term of Service date and your Expiration of Commitment date, so they file you in the Individual Ready Reserve. Unless you volunteer for assignments or the world comes to an end and they've gotta have people who stopped doing PT three years ago to make the world safe for democracy, you'll have nothing more to do with the military at that point.
patricia92243
(12,968 posts)just waiting to go off.
And it is horrifying.
summer_in_TX
(3,816 posts)But once they renamed it to Department of Defense people were much more willing to give it money for "keeping us safe."
May the new old name cause the Department of War's funding fall a lot, if not now, over time.
LudwigPastorius
(13,385 posts)you plan to use it to invade other countries and take their territory.
Captain Zero
(8,404 posts)nt
Old Crank
(6,213 posts)Killing every one on board.
Bernardo de La Paz
(58,319 posts)Javaman
(64,472 posts)
mdbl
(7,337 posts)What else is there to say about it?
Farmer-Rick
(12,072 posts)What a stupid headline.
Pentagon is a nick name or short hand for the Department of Defense. So, the idiots want war so badly they are calling the Department of Defense the Department of War. The building and the Defense Department will still be called the Pentagon.
muriel_volestrangler
(104,686 posts)
"DEPARTMENT OF WAR"
No one from another country is now going to meet this fucker without thinking "he's a complete arsehole. Where's someone we can talk to?" I mean, that reply is actually worse than the average Free Republic post.
kacekwl
(8,566 posts)talking heads call the Department of defense the Department of War I will no longer watch or support them in any way. Just because a man child scratches his name on a paper means nothing and should be treated as garbage.
greatauntoftriplets
(178,219 posts)orangecrush
(26,691 posts)And that like Roosevelt will have no term limits.
That's what this is about.
displacedvermoter
(3,919 posts)Redoing signs, websites, stationery, forms. Hundreds of millions of dollars. They don't care.
BumRushDaShow
(160,061 posts)even back when I had started under an agency that was originally under what was "HEW" (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare), and eventually "HHS" (Department of Health and Human Services), that became "official" about 4 years before I started.
They were STILL trying to reorganize at the time including eventually coming up with a new logo for the Department. And that was back in the mostly "manual" days, with "computers" that were basically mainframes or mini-computers, before any PCs, LANs, or commercial "internet"/"web".
There were boxes and boxes of standard forms and letterheads that still had "HEW" on them.
jmowreader
(52,662 posts)1) Can an Executive Order commit the kind of money needed to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War?
2) Would a Democrat in Congress PLEASE drop a bill in the hopper that says the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are repealed the second anyone on Fox News or One America News Network refers to the Defense Department as the Department of War?
3) Although Trump can't be expected to know this because he used his history book to prop up one of the legs on his bunk in military school, isn't there anyone in his orbit who knows the old War Department was what's now called the Department of the Army? Before 1947 there were two separate departments, the War Department and the Navy Department. In 1947 Congress decided World War II had proven the entire military needed adult supervision and created the department Trump wants to rename, with the Departments of the Army, Navy and later Air Force subordinate to it.
LetMyPeopleVote
(169,744 posts)The president insisted that he and his team were “gonna change the name” of the Defense Department. As it turns out, that isn’t quite right.
Trump wants to rebrand the Defense Department as the ‘Department of War’
— (@midnightsun49.bsky.social) 2025-09-05T17:20:31.892Z
The president insisted that he and his team were “gonna change the name†of the Defense Department. As it turns out, that isn’t quite right.
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-rebrand-defense-department-department-war-rcna229303
The order, which Trump is expected to sign in the Oval Office, won’t rename the Defense Department, but it will authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use secondary titles like ‘secretary of war’ and ‘Department of War’ in official correspondence and public communications and during formal ceremonies, according to a White House preview of the order. Trump will require all executive departments and agencies to ‘recognize and accommodate these secondary titles in internal and external communications.’
......At a White House event last week, a reporter reminded the president that it would require an act of Congress to rename a Cabinet agency. He replied, “We’re just gonna do it.”
The comment now makes more sense: Trump isn’t renaming the department; he’s wrapping a new skin around it like a cheap sedan.
We’ve been headed down this path for much of the year. The first hint came in March, when the president published an item to his social media platform that referred in passing to the Pentagon as “the Department of War.” A few months later, he reiterated his interest in the change and even referred to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as the “secretary of war.”.....
On the other hand, Trump has also destabilized international alliances and institutions, announced plans to acquire countries that don’t appear to have any interest in joining the United States, launched a preemptive strike against Iran, militarized his own country’s capital, mused about launching military strikes against targets in Mexico and Central America, boasted about a military strike against a civilian boat in international waters and is now rebranding the Pentagon — because “we want offense, too.”
If he’s still angling to get that Nobel, he might want to lower his expectations.
trump knows that he does not have votes in congress to officially change the name and so is playing a game here
LetMyPeopleVote
(169,744 posts)
BigmanPigman
(53,736 posts)No one!
The Third Doctor
(443 posts)The Army Department used to be called the Department of war until 1947.
Vinca
(52,679 posts)LetMyPeopleVote
(169,744 posts)