Trump says he plans to rename Department of Defense

August 25, 2025/

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By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

President Donald Trump said Monday that next week the U.S. Department of Defense could once again return to an earlier name: War Department, a moniker it hasn’t used since 1949.

“You know, we call it the Department of Defense, but between us, I think we’re going to change the name,” Trump said during a meeting with South Korea’s president. “If you people behind me want to take a little vote and change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s OK with me … We want defense but we want offense too, OK?”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said: “It’s coming soon, sir.”

Congress established the U.S. War Department in 1789, under President George Washington, to oversee the “operation and maintenance of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps,” according to the White House.

The name changed in 1949 with the an amendment to the National Security Act is amended, renaming the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense. The change rescinded the cabinet-level statuses of Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries and made them all subordinate to the secretary of defense, according to the Pentagon.

Trump has also changed the names of multiple military bases, some landmarks and renamed the “Gulf of Mexico” the “Gulf of America.”

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