The White House has stated that today’s Tuesday, September 2, announcement from the US President Donald Trump is related to the Department of Defense.
Reports suggest that President Trump will officially announce his intention to rename the Department of Defense to its pre-1947 name, the “Department of War,” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth becoming Secretary of War.
It is not currently known how the President intends to accomplish this rebrand, with any official change likely to require an Act of Congress and not just an Executive Order.
Restoring the Department of War name for the government’s largest department would likely require congressional action, but the White House is exploring alternative methods to implement the change, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., filed an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would formally change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
The amendment still faces many hurdles before it becomes law, including a decision by the House Rules Committee on which amendments will even get votes on the House floor. But its filing indicates GOP support in Congress for the idea.
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Trump May Rename the Pentagon Back to ‘Department of War’
White House deputy press Secretary Anna Kelly told Fox News the change comes amid a restoration of U.S. military values.
“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” said Anna Kelly. Also Read:
Trump raised the idea of rebranding the Defense Department as the “Department of War” while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, August 25, saying it “just sounded to me better.”
“It used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound,” Trump said. “We want defense, but we want offense too … As Department of War, we won everything, we won everything, and I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
Trump noted the historical importance of the department’s name during both world wars.
“We won World War I [and] World War II. It was called the Department of War. To me, that’s really what it is,” he said. “I’m talking to the people. Everybody likes that. We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was the Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”
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Trump Seeks Aggressive Military Image with ‘Department of War’ Revival
The Department of War was the name for the Cabinet agency that oversaw the Army for much of the country’s history.
Established shortly after the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the department first included the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps before the Department of the Navy was created as a separate Cabinet agency in 1798.
In 1947, Congress passed a sweeping reorganization of the country’s national security apparatus that included replacing the War Department with the Department of the Army, creating the Air Force, and establishing a new umbrella agency to oversee each military department.
Two years later, Congress amended the law and named the nascent agency the Department of Defense.
An amendment to the law passed in 1949 officially introduced the name “Department of Defense,” establishing the structure in place today.
The reorganization was championed by then-President Harry Truman as a way to make the services more cohesive after World War II.
“One of the lessons which have most clearly come from the costly and dangerous experience of this war is that there must be unified direction of land, sea and air forces at home as well as in all other parts of the world where our armed forces are serving,” Truman said in a 1945 message to Congress.
“It is true, we were able to win in spite of these handicaps. But it is now time to take stock, to discard obsolete organizational forms and to provide for the future the soundest, the most effective, and the most economical kind of structure for our armed forces of which this most powerful nation is capable.”
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been working to promote a more aggressive image of the military while making a spate of other changes, including purging top military leaders whose views have been seen as being at odds with Trump.
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