President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday to change the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War, according to a senior administration official.
The shift is part of a broader effort to present a more aggressive, victorious military to the world.
The renaming of a federal agency would likely require an act of Congress. But the White House is looking for other alternatives that would avoid a vote, according to another person familiar with the deliberations.
A War Department existed after U.S. independence until 1947, when the Truman administration split the Army and Air Force into separate military branches and joined them with the then-independent Navy to form a new agency. An act of Congress two years later coined it the Department of Defense.
