House Republicans fired the first shot in a looming Congressional battle over officially adopting President Donald Trump’s preferred name for the Defense Department — with a party-line committee vote to rename it the “Department of War.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, led the charge by introducing an amendment to the proposed $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act during Thursday night’s meeting of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Restoring the name Department of War sends an unmistakable signal to the world,” Trump’s former White House physician said, according to Politico. “Deterrence only works when adversaries believe America is willing to fight and win to secure its interests.”
Jackson also told fellow lawmakers they could “see firsthand how beautiful it actually is” as Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, held up a Pentagon logo bearing the proposed new name, according to The Hill.
Democrats ridiculed the effort, with Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s ranking member, saying, “I really think this is one of the dumbest things that has been done by this administration.”
Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., reportedly called the move “performative bull****.”
In September, Trump signed a non-binding executive order to change the department’s name to the one it had from 1789 until President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which restructured the military and created the CIA and the president’s National Security Council.
Trump’s order came days after he floated the idea, telling reporters that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been “incredible with the, as I call it, the Department of War.”
“I think because, you know, Department of Defense, we won World War I, World War II, it was called the Department of War. And to me, that’s really what it is,” Trump said.
Hegseth immediately embraced the change, leading to merciless mocking on a November episode of South Park that also altered the lyrics of Kenny Loggins’ 1986 song “Danger Zone” — featured in the hit Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun” — to repeatedly call the secretary a “f***ing douche.”
A December report by the Congressional Budget Office said changing the Defense Department’s name would cost “at least a few million dollars” to potentially “hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how Congress and DoD choose to implement the change.”
In late April, the Pentagon asked Congress to codify the renaming and estimated the cost of the change at about $52 million, The Hill reported at the time.
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