By Thomas Whitaker
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is asking Congress to finish a job President Donald Trump started 13 months ago by executive order: making “Department of War” the legal name of the Department of Defense. The request lands as lawmakers prepare to return after the Nov. 3 election to a crowded lame-duck session in which the annual defense policy bill is one of the largest pieces of unfinished business.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman and a senior adviser to Secretary Pete Hegseth, made the case in a Fox News op-ed published Monday. “The president has acted. Now Congress must finish the job,” Parnell wrote. “The House and the Senate Armed Services Committee have both backed restoring the Department of War name in this year’s defense bill. Lawmakers should keep it in the final version and send it to the president’s desk. The name of the institution that sends Americans to fight belongs in law, not just in an executive order.”
Both chambers’ versions of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act carry the change. Whether it survives depends on negotiators from the House and Senate Armed Services committees, who must merge two bills that have not yet met on the Senate floor.
What the bills would do
The House-passed bill, H.R. 8800, includes Section 1091, which adds a new section to Title 10 of the U.S. Code. It reads: “Any reference to the Secretary of Defense or Department of Defense in any law, regulation, map, document, record, or other paper of the United States shall be deemed to be a reference to the Secretary of War or Department of War, respectively.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s bill, S. 4784, goes further. Its Section 1078, titled “Redesignation of the Department of Defense as the Department of War,” strikes the old name and title throughout Titles 10, 32 and 37 of the U.S. Code, which govern the armed forces, the National Guard and military pay, and adds the same deeming language.
The name change already appears on the department’s letterhead, websites and signs. Trump authorized “Department of War” as a secondary title for the department, and “Secretary of War” for Hegseth, in Executive Order 14347 on Sept. 5, 2025. But an executive order cannot change the name Congress gave the department in statute, and the fiscal 2026 defense bill that became law in December, Public Law 119-60, did not include a rename.
The White House has put its weight behind the House language. In its July 21 Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 8800, the Office of Management and Budget said the administration “strongly supports the inclusion of section 1091 in the bill, which would accomplish the final restoration of the name ‘Department of War,’ a clear recognition of the Department of War’s focus on peace through strength and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our nation.”
The administration’s argument
Parnell’s op-ed framed the change as a return to the department’s roots rather than a new invention. The War Department was created in 1789 under President George Washington and kept that name through the Civil War and both world wars. After the National Security Act of 1947 reorganized the military, the department became the Department of Defense in 1949.
“This is a restoration, not an invention,” Parnell wrote. He credited the president and Hegseth directly: “President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had the conviction to say so plainly. Many in Washington would have left the name alone. The president chose clarity over convenience when he signed the executive order authorizing the Department of War name.”
He also answered the most common objection, that the change is only symbolic. “Critics call the change symbolic, even unnecessary. They have it backward,” he wrote. “Words define the mission, and the mission drives everything else.”
Parnell acknowledged the limits of a new nameplate. “Of course, a name alone does not make a military stronger,” he wrote, adding that every acquisition decision, training exercise and investment should be judged by whether it makes troops more capable of defeating any threat. And he sought to reassure readers who worry the name implies a shift in posture: “Our forces will still respond to disasters, support allies and carry out every lawful mission. And the name changes nothing about the constitutional roles of Congress or the president.”
A party-line fight in committee
In the House Armed Services Committee, the rename came in through an amendment from Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former White House physician and close Trump ally. The committee adopted it 29-27 on party lines during a 14-hour markup in June, Breaking Defense reported. Jackson unveiled a mock-up of a department seal bearing the new name.
“Restoring the name Department of War sends an unmistakable signal to the world,” Jackson said. “Potential adversaries like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran evaluate American resolve through both our capabilities and our messaging.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s ranking Democrat, dismissed the idea. “I really think this is one of the dumbest things that has been done by this administration, and it doesn’t make any sense, but practically speaking, it makes no freaking difference whatsoever,” Smith said. Responding to the argument that the name would intimidate rivals, he added, “I wish our adversaries were that stupid.”
The committee approved the full bill 44-12 shortly after midnight on June 5, with Democrats casting all of the no votes. In a separate naming fight the same night, two Republicans joined Democrats to adopt an amendment from Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.) on base names, a provision the White House opposes.
How the House and Senate voted
The full House passed H.R. 8800 by 216 to 212 on July 22, according to the House Clerk’s record of Roll Call 278. Republicans voted 209 to 7 for it, and Democrats voted 205 to 6 against. That vote covered the whole $1.15 trillion bill, not the rename alone.
Western New York’s delegation split along party lines. Republican Reps. Nick Langworthy and Claudia Tenney voted yes. Democratic Reps. Tim Kennedy of Buffalo and Joe Morelle of Rochester voted no.
The Senate has not taken up its version. On July 14, a motion to begin debate on S. 4784 drew 50 votes in favor and 46 against, short of the 60 needed. That leaves staff on the two Armed Services committees to work out differences informally. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), a senior House Armed Services Republican, said such bicameral staff talks are underway, Roll Call reported Tuesday. The same report described the bill as tangled up with fights over the war with Iran and the administration’s record budget request.
What it would cost
Cost is one of the main questions Democrats have raised. Responding to Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office said last November that carrying out the executive order could cost about $10 million under a modest rollout, a few million dollars under a minimal one, and up to $125 million if done broadly and quickly. CBO also noted that the Pentagon’s comptroller reported spending $1.9 million in the first 30 days. “A statutory renaming could cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” CBO wrote, because the law would require changes across far more documents, systems and signs.
Higher figures have circulated, including a range of up to $2 billion that NBC News attributed to unnamed people briefed on internal estimates. That is not a CBO number, and the Pentagon said at the time that a final estimate had not been determined.
For Western New York, a final law would make the new name official on the signs and paperwork of facilities such as Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, home to the Air Force Reserve’s 914th Air Refueling Wing and the New York Air National Guard’s 107th Attack Wing. The department has not said how quickly local signs would change.
What comes next
Lawmakers return Nov. 9, and the stopgap law funding the government expires Dec. 11. Congress has passed a defense authorization bill for more than six decades in a row, and negotiators typically settle hundreds of differences in a final compromise. The name provision is one of them. Because both committee bills include it, the question for conferees is less whether to include a rename than which version to adopt.
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking comment from the House Armed Services Committee’s majority and minority offices, Jackson, Smith, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Pentagon press office and will update this story with any response.
Photo: Rep. Ronny Jackson, official portrait by Brian Thorpe, U.S. House of Representatives, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
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