- The necessary congress approval, but the Republicans do not oppose.
- Critics argue that the change of name is a expensive and unnecessary distraction.
- Move would put the Trump seal in the largest organization in the government.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, plans to sign an executive order on Friday to change the name of the “War Department Department,” said a White House official on Thursday, a measure that would put the Trump label in the largest organization of the government.
The order would authorize the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense and the subordinated officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War”, “Department of War” and “Secretary of War of the ViceMatilio” in Official Correspondence and Public Communications, according to a White House report sheet.
The measure would instruct Hegesh to recommend the legislative and executive actions necessary for the change of name to be permanent.
Since he assumed the position in January, Trump set out to change the name of a variety of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and restore the original names of the military bases that were changed after the protests of racial justice.
The changes in the names of the department are rare and require the approval of the Congress, but Trump’s republican colleagues have a higher majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the leaders of the Congress of the party have shown little appetite for opposing any of Trump’s initiatives.
The United States Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, the Navy and the Air Force following World War II. The name was chosen in part to point out that in the nuclear era, the United States focused on preventing wars, according to historians.
Changing the name will be expensive again and will require the update of signs and letterheads used not only by pentagon officials in Washington, DC, but also military facilities worldwide.
An effort by former President Joe Biden to change the name of nine bases that honored Confederation and Confederate leaders would cost the Army $ 39 million. That effort was reversed by Hegseth earlier this year.
The Trump administration government reduction team, known as the Government’s efficiency department, has tried to carry out cuts in the Pentagon in an attempt to save money.
“Why not put this money to support military families or by using diplomats that help prevent conflicts from starting first?” Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth, veteran military and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
“Because Trump would prefer to use our army to score political points than to strengthen our national security and support our brave members of the service and their families, that’s why,” she said Reuters.
A long time in manufacturing
Critics have said that the planned name change is not only expensive, but an unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.
Hegesh has said that changing the name “is not just words, but that it is the warrior spirit.”
This year, one of the closest Congress allies of Trump, the president of the Supervision Committee of the United States Representatives Chamber, James Eat, presented a bill that would facilitate a president to reorganize and change the name of the agencies.
“We are just going to do it. I am sure that Congress will continue if we need that … the defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we also want to be offensive if we have to be,” Trump said last month.
Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was originally changed to be “politically correct.”
But for some in the Trump administration, the effort goes back much further.
During Trump’s first term, the current director of the FBI, Kash Patel, who was briefly in the Pentagon, had a firm in his emails that said: “Chief of Cabinet of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of War.”
“I see it as a tribute to the history and heritage of the Department of Defense,” Patel told Reuters In 2021.
