President Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War, reviving a name that was last used in 1947.
“We won the first World War, we won the Second World War,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. “Then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense.”
Trump said the name change “sends a message of victory. I think it sends a message of strength.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the name change signaled that “words matter” and it is about “restoring the warrior ethos.”
Under the executive order, the Department of War is set to be the agency’s secondary title until Congress approves the new name. The executive order, Trump’s 200th since taking office, will authorize the use of the name Department of War in official correspondence and public communications. It will also direct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions to make the change to Department of War permanent.
Trump dismissed concern that the renaming of the Department of Defense will be costly.
“We know how to rebrand without having to go crazy doing it,” Trump said.
A Pentagon official said: “The cost estimate will fluctuate as we carry out President Trump’s directive to establish the Department of War’s name. We will have a clearer estimate to report at a later time.”
The department’s website has already changed to war.gov, while the name panel outside Hegseth’s office has been replaced. The new one describes him as the Secretary of War. Trump also said that departmental stationery would be changed to reflect the new name.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the rebranding should mean the department is better equipped. “Can’t preserve American primacy if we’re unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than Carter or Biden,” McConnell posted on social media.
The U.S. created the Department of War in 1789. Separate departments initially ran the different military branches.
After World War II, President Harry S. Truman merged the armed forces under one organization in 1947 under a bill passed by Congress. The government called the organization the National Military Establishment until renaming it the Department of Defense in 1949.
The Pentagon began crafting legislative proposals to change the name in the early weeks of Trump’s current term, a former official told The Wall Street Journal last month. The agency considered asking Congress for authority to use the old name during a national emergency.
Trump was also joined in the Oval Office by Gen. Dan Caine , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I’m going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace,” Trump said.
Trump also signed an executive order Friday enabling the U.S. to punish countries and terror groups with stiff sanctions and travel bans for detaining Americans, a new tool meant to attack the practice of hostage diplomacy.
The order will empower the Secretary of State to designate a foreign country as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and is modeled on the U.S. state sponsor of terrorism list.
“For us, the goal is ending hostage diplomacy broadly,” said Adam Boehler , the U.S. special envoy for hostage response. “You can’t have our citizens.”
Write to Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com
