NEW: Trump To Change Name Of Largest Government Department

The Trump Administration is moving forward with plans to revert the name of the Defense Department back to its original title, the Department of War.

Restoring the name of the government’s largest department would likely require congressional approval, though the White House is currently exploring alternative measures, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) filed an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would change the name of the department, indicating some level of congressional support for the name change.

The White House has yet to provide additional details on the plan, though a Pentagon spokesperson said the name is preferred in order to demonstrate the military’s offensive capabilities.

“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.

Trump raised the idea of rebranding the Defense Department as the “Department of War” while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, saying it “just sounded to me better.”

“It used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound,” Trump said. “We want defense, but we want offense too … As Department of War we won everything, we won everything and I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”

President George Washington’s original cabinet contained just four departments and department heads: Department of State, which was led by inaugural Secretary Thomas Jefferson, Department of the Treasury, which was conceived and headed up by Alexander Hamilton, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, and the Department of War, which was first led by distinguished Continental Army General Henry Knox.

The War Department existed until 1947, when it was initially split into the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, and the Department of the Navy. Congress had previously established a Department of the Navy in 1798, which was under the War Department’s purview

President Harry Truman proposed a unified department of national defense in order to better coordinate U.S. Military affairs after the Second World War. In July of 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which established the National Military Establishment (NME) and created several individual departments, including the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Air Force.

All of these entities were placed under the control of the National Military Establishment,  while the U.S. Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first NME director a day after the department was established. In 1949, the NME was official renamed to the Department of Defense.