The Trump administration is now referring to the Pentagon as the Department of War, even though the name has not legally changed.

On Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving the Department of Defense the “secondary name” of the Department of War – a workaround for the fact that a formal name change requires an act of Congress. The order also authorizes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use the “secondary title” of secretary of war.

The change aligns with the administration’s fixation on “lethality” and a “warrior ethos,” and exemplifies the more aggressive military posture it has been taking, such as its legally questionable military strike^[1] on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and deployment of troops to U.S. cities^[2].

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“We’re going Department of War,” Trump said during an Oval Office signing ceremony. “I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”

“It really has to do with winning,” Trump added later. “We should have won every war. We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or ‘wokey.’”

Standing alongside Trump, Hegseth said the name change signifies the department will focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct.”

Almost immediately after the signing, the rebrand began. The defense.gov website redirected to war.gov; Hegseth’s handle on the social media site X changed to @SecWar; and officials swapped the placard^[4] on Hegseth’s office door with one with the secretary of war title.

Trump and his allies have framed the rebrand as a return to the Defense Department’s historical name, but the Department of War was not the same agency as the Pentagon.

The Department of War was, essentially, the Department of the Army.

The Department of War was established as a Cabinet agency shortly after the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. Nine years later, the Department of the Navy was established as its own Cabinet agency.

Following World War II, then-President Harry Truman advocated for a sweeping reorganization of the country’s national security agencies, arguing the war demonstrated that the existing structure was incohesive and uncollaborative.

Congress approved the reorganization with the 1947 National Security Act. The law replaced the Department of War with the Department of the Army; created the Air Force; and established a new umbrella organization to oversee the departments of the Army, Air Force and Navy.

Originally called the National Military Establishment, the name of the umbrella agency was changed to the Department of Defense with a 1949 amendment to the National Security Act.

The choice of the word “defense” for the nascent department reflected changing attitudes about the morality of war, said Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security and political science at the University of New Haven.

“After Truman – of course, he was the only human being to order the dropping of nuclear weapons – everybody rapidly realized that you could not have a department of war, because the whole point of such a place was to defend against the outbreak of war because it was understood that no one could win in a nuclear war,” Schmidt said.

Conversely, reviving the Department of War name signals a return to a more aggressive mindset, he added.

“It signals a move back into an older, more insecure and frightening global order where the world and the peoples of the world, including the peoples of the United States, have to worry about warfare as an everyday function and not as something that should be rare, that should be defended against,” Schmidt said. “There's no reason that you can't have a Department of Defense that is focused on this idea of lethality and not call it a Department of Defense. You do not have to privilege this idea of aggressive war in order to privilege the idea of lethality. You can say the best way to defend my country, the best way to defend the Constitution, is to bulk up the lethality of my military.”

While Trump’s order does not formally rename the department, it directs Hegseth to come up with legislative proposals to do so.

Hegseth may not have much work to do on that front. Republicans have already introduced proposals in Congress to officially change the name to the Department of War.

As first reported by Military.com last week, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., filed an amendment^[5] to the annual defense policy bill to make the change. Steube and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also introduced a stand-alone bill this week to formalize the name change.

“‘But senator, don’t you often criticize needless foreign wars?’ Yes. I also oppose polite euphemisms that help politicians dodge responsibility for the deadly conflicts they often engineer and force you to pay for,” Lee posted on social media Tuesday about introducing the bill.

Still, it’s unclear whether such legislation could pass. Legislation in the Senate usually needs 60 votes to pass, and Democrats, who hold 47 seats in the upper chamber, are panning the idea.

“Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a former naval aviator, posted on social media Thursday night.

Related: Trump Wants a Department of War. A House GOP Amendment Would Give Him One.^[6]

President Donald Trump’s administration is sending multiple F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico in operations against drug cartels – another major escalation of force in the region that is concerning legal experts and stoking international tensions.

A source familiar with the plans confirmed the deployment of 10 F-35s to Military.com. Reuters first reported the F-35s would be used in operations against designated narco-terrorist organizations operating in the southern Caribbean, and they’re scheduled to arrive in the area by late next week.

The escalation and planned use of the highly advanced and costly stealth aircraft come after the Pentagon sent out a public warning Thursday evening to Venezuela for its military aircraft flying near a Navy vessel, an act they labeled as a “highly provocative move” that interfered with the newly stepped-up U.S. operations.

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The planned deployment of the F-35s also comes days after the Trump administration touted an airstrike on a small boat^[2] in the southern Caribbean Sea, killing all 11 people on board. The administration alleged they were members of the Tren de Aragua international gang and were transporting drugs, without providing evidence, which has raised concerns from legal experts about the unprecedented use of military force on civilians outside of a war zone.

In the early hours of taking office in January, Trump signed an executive order designating certain drug cartels as terrorist organizations. From the Oval Office on Friday, Trump, when asked by a reporter whether it will be a regular action, said “it depends on the individual instance.”

“You know, we don't want drugs coming in from Venezuela or anybody else or anyplace else, and we'll be tough on that,” he added.

Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and former Navy judge advocate general, writing in the Just Security policy journal on Friday, raised concerns about the administration’s actions and wrote that “applying a new label to an old problem does not transform the problem itself – nor does it grant the U.S. president or the U.S. military expanded legal authority to kill civilians.”

Presently, there is no congressional authorization that would allow for military action against drug cartels. Nevitt said the administration's actions could open up a new series of “forever wars” – referring to the U.S. military’s decades-long involvement with terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

“Never before has drug trafficking been treated as terrorism, and there is a danger that, with this rhetorical move, the Trump administration is attempting to open a new ‘forever war’ against an amorphous set of actors who are not in reality engaged in hostilities against the United States,” Nevitt wrote.

The decision to send F-35s is also puzzling to some defense experts. Dan Grazier, the senior fellow and director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, told Military.com in an interview Friday that selecting the stealth strike fighter likely was less about strategy and all about messaging.

“I'm willing to bet that this is more about strategic signaling than it is about actual military effectiveness,” Grazier said. “From a messaging standpoint, we're committing 10 of our highest-profile, most advanced aircraft for this role.”

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