Pentagon demands Congress make Department of War name change permanent

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell demanded Monday that Congress permanently rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, after President Trump signed an executive order last year that unofficially allowed the moniker. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced a resolution that would have approved the permanent renaming earlier this year, but it failed to make it into the final 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

"President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had the conviction to call us the Department of War and say it plainly: America’s military exists to deter war through strength and, if necessary, fight and win," Parnell said in a post on X. "The President has acted. Now Congress must finish the job and enshrine the Department of War name in law."

The department was initially called the War Department, but it was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949 after the reorganization of the military, which consolidated the service branches under the same administrative head. 

"This is a restoration, not an invention," Parnell wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. "The War Department was established in 1789 under President George Washington. For more than 150 years, it carried America’s military through its most consequential conflicts, from Union victory in the Civil War to Allied victory in two world wars.

"The world has changed since then. The mission has not. When the nation calls, our warfighters must be ready to fight, win and come home," he added.

Trump signed the executive order last September, which made the Department of War a "secondary" title for the Department of Defense, and "secretary of war" a secondary title for Hegseth.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.