Trump to rename Defense Department the Department of War in ‘childish’ decision

In what can only be described as the kind of decision a 14-year-old obsessed with Call of Duty would make, US president Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that will change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

The Defense Department, which oversees the operations of the United States’ military, was originally called the Department of War when it was established as a Cabinet department in 1789.

It was dissolved in 1947 and renamed the National Military Establishment (NME), before being amended as the Department of Defense in 1949.

The executive order, which Trump is expected to sign on Friday (5 September) in the Oval Office, will see authorise defense secretary Pete Hegseth to use the secondary titles “secretary of war” and “Department of War” in official correspondence and documentation.

On Thursday (4 September) Hegseth wrote the words “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Officially, and permanently, changing the department’s name would require congressional approval.

On 25 August, Trump suggested at a press conference that he would bypass Congress to change department’s name, saying “we’re just going to do it”.

“I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that,” the president said.

During the same conference, Trump suggested the US won more wars when the department was named the Department of War: “Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War.”

This view was echoed by Hegseth during an interview on Fox News.

“We won WWI, and we won WWII, 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 defence, we’re offence.”

He continued: “We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defence. We think words and names and titles matter. So we’re working with the White House and the president on it.”

The department’s rebrand – which could cost up to a billion dollars to change all logos, uniforms and official documentation used by the department – is part of the Trump administration’s “warrior ethos” campaign which in recent months has seen the government crack down on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) and ban trans people from the military.

The DEI reversal led to several innocuous images being unintentionally selected for deletion from the department’s webpages.

In March, The Associated Press obtained a database of at least 26,000 images which had supposedly been flagged for removal as part of the purge on so-called “woke” material, including an  image of World War II B-29 aircraft Enola Gay – which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during the Second World War. 

Another photograph earmarked for deletion was one of Army Corps biologists collecting data about fish, possibly flagged because caption mentions they were recording data about fish including weight and gender. 

Gender, like gay, possibly being viewed as a DEI-aligned phrase.

Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War. https://t.co/WJcyI1ZsID

— Captain Mark Kelly (@CaptMarkKelly) September 4, 2025

Unsurprisingly, news of the name change has been criticised by many.

New Jersey Democrat Andy Kim was quoted by the BBC as saying changing the department’s name is a childish idea, adding: “Americans want to prevent wars, not tout them.”

Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a member of the armed services committee, asked: “Why not put this money toward supporting military families or toward employing diplomats that help prevent conflicts from starting in the first place?”

Captain Mark Kelly, a Navy combat veteran, retired NASA astronaut and Arizona senator, said: “Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War.”

On social media, members of the public were equally bemused.

One user wrote we are “living in the dumbest of times” whilst a second wrote: “Nothing says “Nobel Peace prize” quite like the changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”