By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and CHRIS MEGERIAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to signal an govt order Friday to rebrand the Department of Defense because the Division of Battle, his newest effort to challenge a picture of toughness for America’s army.
The Republican president can’t formally change the identify with out laws, which his administration would request from Congress. Within the meantime, Trump will authorize the Pentagon to make use of “secondary titles” so the division can go by its unique identify.
The plans had been disclosed by a White Home official, who requested anonymity forward of the general public announcement, and detailed in a White Home truth sheet.
The Division of Battle was created in 1789, the identical yr that the U.S. Structure took impact. It was renamed by regulation in 1947, two years after the top of World Battle II.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth posted “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” on social media after the manager order was initially reported by Fox Information.
Trump and Hegseth have lengthy talked about altering the identify, and Hegseth even created a social media ballot on the subject in March.
Since then, he has hinted that his title as protection secretary might not be everlasting at a number of public occasions, together with a speech at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Thursday. He instructed an auditorium filled with troopers that it “could also be a barely completely different title tomorrow.”
In August, Trump instructed reporters that “all people likes that we had an unbelievable historical past of victory when it was Division of Battle. Then we modified it to Division of Protection.”
When confronted with the likelihood that making the identify change would require an act of Congress, Trump instructed reporters that “we’re simply going to do it.”
“I’m positive Congress will go alongside if we want that,” he added.
The transfer is simply the newest in a protracted line of cultural adjustments Hegseth has made to the Pentagon since taking workplace at first of the yr.
Early in his tenure, Hegseth pushed exhausting to eradicate what he noticed because the impacts of “woke tradition” on the army by not solely ridding the division of range packages however scrubbing libraries and web sites of fabric deemed to be divisive.
The consequence was the removal and review of hundreds of books within the army academies, which ended up together with titles on the Holocaust and a Maya Angelou memoir. It additionally resulted within the removing off thousands of websites honoring contributions by girls and minority teams.
“I believe the president and the secretary have been very clear on this — that anyone that claims within the Division of Protection that range is our power is, is frankly, incorrect,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell instructed reporters in March.
Hegseth has additionally presided over the removing of all transgender troops from the army following an govt order from Trump by way of a course of that some have described as “dehumanizing” or “open cruelty.”
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