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September 5 2025

Greg Loving

05 Sep 2025 • 2 min read

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Trump to order Department of Defense renamed the 'Department of War'

WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense the "Department of War," a White House official said on Thursday, a move that would put Trump's stamp on the government's biggest organization.The order would authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as "Secretary of War," "Department of War," and "Deputy Secretary of War" in official correspondence and public communications, according to a White House fact sheet. The U.S. Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War Two. The name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the U.S. was focused on preventing wars, according to historians.

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