Department of War? Defense rebrand hasn't caught on -- even in the GOP, poll shows

Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald on Oct 9, 2025

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President Donald Trump rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, but the name change hasn’t quite caught on — even among Republicans, according to a new YouGov poll.

In the survey, 72% of respondents said they are more likely to refer to “the part of the government that handles the military” as the Department of Defense, while just 18% said they’re more prone to describe it as the Department of War.

Democrats were the least likely to embrace the change, with 90% favoring the branch’s defense title. Seventy-two percent of independents said the same.

A majority of Republicans, 55%, also said they would call it the Department of Defense, while 34% said they’d adopt the new title.

This question revealed a slight gender divide, with 75% of women and 68% of men saying they would refer to the branch by its old name.

Additionally, those who use the term Department of War were far more likely to approve of Trump’s handling of the military compared with those who use the term Department of Defense — 84% versus 27%.

The survey sampled 1,131 U.S. adults Sept. 30-Oct. 2, and it has a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.

It comes after Trump issued an executive order on Sept. 5 titled “Restoring the United States Department of War.”

The order permitted the Department of War to be used as an officially sanctioned secondary title for the Department of Defense. It also authorized Secretary Pete Hegseth to use the title secretary of war, including in official correspondence and public communications.

In response, Hegseth replaced the “secretary of defense” placard on his office door with one that says “secretary of war.”

Trump previously suggested a name change was coming. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office in August, he remarked that the Department of War “just sounded to me better.”

The rebranding is a nod to the past. In 1789, President George Washington signed legislation establishing the War Department, which was only restyled as the Department of Defense in 1949, shortly after World War II.

But, while the president may refer to the branch as the Department of War, it would take an act of Congress to make the title permanent.