Trump says he wants a ‘Department of War’ not a ‘Department of Defense’
Donald Trump just said for the third time today that he plans to rebrand the “Department of Defense” by returning to the pre-1947 name, the “Department of War”.
The president, whose pre-politics business career was largely focused on marketing, first raised the idea on Monday morning, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, standing behind him.
“So Pete, you started off by saying the ‘Department of Defense’, and somehow it didn’t sound good to me, you know, it didn’t sound good. ‘Defense’ what are we ‘defense’, why are we ‘defense’? So it used to be called the ‘Department of War’ and it had a stronger sound”, the president said.
He then told the handful of officials lined up behind him – namely: JD Vance, the vice-president; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff; Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and Hegseth – “if you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote and you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s okay with me”.
Later, while taking questions alongside the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, Trump again raised the idea, out of the blue.
“Pete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the ‘Department of War’. You know, we call it the ‘Department of Defense’, but, between us, I think we’re going to change the name”, Trump said during a riff about border security.
By way of explanation, the president added: “We won the World War I, World War II, it was called the ‘Department of War’. And to me, that’s really what it is”.
Trump raised the idea a third time during a meeting on Monday afternoon with family members of 13 US military personnel who were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber, along with 170 Afghan civilians, at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate in 2021, as the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan.
Asked by a reporter how he plans to rename the defense department the ‘Department of War’, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that”.
“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate… the other is, ‘Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better”.
Key events
Republican lawmakers ask California supreme court to block vote on new Congressional maps
A group of Republican lawmakers in California filed an emergency petition to the state supreme court on Monday asking that a redistricting initiative devised by the state’s Democratic leadership be removed from a special election scheduled for November.
Last week, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill to put Proposition 50 to the state’s voters, which would temporarily suspend an independent redistricting commission, until after the 2030 election, and put in place a new map of congressional districts, which is tilted in favor of the Democrats. The new map, which would likely give the Democrats an extra five seats in the US House, is intended to cancel out a new map drawn by Texas Republicans at the request of Donald Trump.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Republican members of the state legislature, three California voters and a former member of the state’s independent redistricting commission. Last week, the same court declined a request from one of the same Republican lawmakers to block the Democrats from putting the proposition on the ballot.
The Republican lawmakers are represented by the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, formerly represented the conservative media activists James O’Keefe and Andy Ngo, and is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the justice department.
Trump administration plans to halt another wind farm off the coast of another blue state
In a court filing on Friday, the Trump administration said that it intends to withdraw federal approval for an offshore wind farm off the coasts of Maryland and Delaware.
The filing, in a case challenging the 2024 approval of US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project in US district court in Delaware, came the same day that the interior department issued a stop-work order that halted the construction of a nearly complete wind farm off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Lawyers for the justice department told the Delaware court that the interior department, which is now run by the former North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, who has close ties to oil and gas producers, would move to vacate approval of the facility’s construction and operations plan by September 12.
When the interior department approved the offshore wind project, in December 2024, the government said the project had the potential to power over 718,000 homes, using up to 114 wind turbine generators located approximately 10 nautical miles offshore Ocean City, Maryland, and approximately 9 nautical miles offshore Sussex County, Delaware.
US Wind is owned by funds managed by Apollo Global Management, an American investment firm, and Renexia SpA, a subsidiary of Italy’s Toto Holding SpA. The project was scheduled to begin construction in 2026.
After the scuttling of the wind farm off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut was reported over the weekend, Lee Zeldin, the was asked by a Fox News anchor, “What’s the problem with this wind farm in Rhode Island?”
Zeldin replied: “President Trump has been very consistent: he’s not a fan of wind”.
Trump says he wants a ‘Department of War’ not a ‘Department of Defense’
Donald Trump just said for the third time today that he plans to rebrand the “Department of Defense” by returning to the pre-1947 name, the “Department of War”.
The president, whose pre-politics business career was largely focused on marketing, first raised the idea on Monday morning, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, standing behind him.
“So Pete, you started off by saying the ‘Department of Defense’, and somehow it didn’t sound good to me, you know, it didn’t sound good. ‘Defense’ what are we ‘defense’, why are we ‘defense’? So it used to be called the ‘Department of War’ and it had a stronger sound”, the president said.
He then told the handful of officials lined up behind him – namely: JD Vance, the vice-president; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff; Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and Hegseth – “if you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote and you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s okay with me”.
Later, while taking questions alongside the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, Trump again raised the idea, out of the blue.
“Pete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the ‘Department of War’. You know, we call it the ‘Department of Defense’, but, between us, I think we’re going to change the name”, Trump said during a riff about border security.
By way of explanation, the president added: “We won the World War I, World War II, it was called the ‘Department of War’. And to me, that’s really what it is”.
Trump raised the idea a third time during a meeting on Monday afternoon with family members of 13 US military personnel who were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber, along with 170 Afghan civilians, at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate in 2021, as the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan.
Asked by a reporter how he plans to rename the defense department the ‘Department of War’, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that”.
“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate… the other is, ‘Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better”.
Lauren Gambino
Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, delivered a blistering – and, by his own account, petty – denunciation of Donald Trump in his remarks to the DNC summer meeting in Minneapolis.
Had Kamala Harris won the election in November, Americans would have woken up each morning to an “adult with compassion and dignity and vision and leadership” in the White House, “not a man child crying about whatever’s wrong with him,” Walz said.
“May his fat ankles find something today,” he added, as the crowd of Democrats oohed and clapped. “Petty as hell.”
Walz, considered a possible presidential contender in 2028, bemoaned the focus on Democratic infighting, which he likened to a marital squabble. “Don’t take the bait,” he implored fellow Democrats.
“Think of how easy it would be to be a damn Republican,” the governor went on. “What should I wear today? This stupid freaking red hat. What should I say today? I don’t know. Just make sure it’s cruel. Who do we listen to? ‘That guy.’ ‘Oh, the felon in the White House.?’ ‘Yeah, listen to him.’”
But Walz did weigh in on several issues roiling the party. Amid calls for generational change, he said he wouldn’t tell anyone “you are too damn old” to run again for office. And he boasted that Minnesota was considered a safe haven for transgender people in the US.
“Can I just say we can talk about economic growth and feeding children and growing the economy and creating jobs simultaneously with talking about everybody’s human rights matters,” Walz declared to applause. “You can do both.”
House oversight committee subpoenas Epstein estate for ‘birthday book’
The House oversight committee also subpoenaed Jeffrey Epstein’s estate today, as part of their ongoing investigation.
Republican congressman and committee chair, James Comer, wrote that the estate is in “custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals”.
Last week, at the committee’s request, the justice department sent over the first tranche of records relating to the late sex-offender.
Comer notes that recent reporting suggests the estate is in possession of the notorious “birthday book” – an album of messages to Epstein for his 50th birthday, compiled by his associate, convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump was a contributor.
‘Administration needs to put up or shut up in court,’ says Democratic senator on Kilmar Ábrego García’s Ice detention
Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic senator from Maryland, said the Trump administration “continues to spread lies about the facts” of Kilmar Ábrego García’s case. The Maryland man was detained earlier, after reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Baltimore.
In April, Van Hollen visited Ábrego García in El Salvador, while he was being detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center, otherwise known as Cecot.
Today, Van Hollen said that Ábrego was entitled to due process:
Instead of spewing unproven allegations in the press and social media, the Trump Administration needs to put up or shut up in court and allow Mr. Ábrego García the opportunity to defend himself.
House oversight committee launches investigation into allegations of ‘manipulated’ police data
The House oversight committee is launching their own investigation into claims of “manipulated” crime data by the Metropolitan police department (MPD).
In a letter, Republican congressman James Comer, who chairs the committee, asked DC police chief Pamela Smith for transcribed interviews with the seven commanders of DC’s patrol districts. Comer added that the investigation was the result of reports that commander Michael Pulliam was suspended from MPD for allegedly falsifying data. Charges that denies.
Comer also notes that a whistleblower informed the committee that “crime statistics were allegedly manipulated on a widespread basis and at the direction of senior MPD official.”
Federal prosecutors have also launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Washington DC police systematically manipulated crime statistics to make the city appear safer than it actually is, according to various reports.
A reminder that Donald Trump has routinely accused city officials, without evidence, of producing “phoney” crime data.
DNC summer meeting begins as party faces fundraising and voter registration struggles
Lauren Gambino
Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Ken Martin exhorted his party to “fight like hell” against Donald Trump – and the “weak, spineless Republican rubber stamps who aid and abet him.”
“This is not politics as usual, my friends,” Martin said, in a fiery speech that adopted the party’s more confrontational turn of late. “This is authoritarianism. It’s fascism dressed in a red tie.”
DNC officials gathered in Martin’s home town of Minneapolis for a three-day summer meeting as Democrats search for a new direction, and the chair, just six months into the job, faces questions about his ability to steer the party to victory ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In his opening remarks on Monday, Martin nodded to some of the internal disagreements roiling the party: “No one should confuse unity with unanimity.”
He chastised Democratic officials for being too content “winning arguments” rather than elections. “We need to fight harder, we need to organise smarter, and we need to make sure that people everywhere, no matter where they live, understand that the Democratic Party is their party,” he said.
The session was poignant for Martin. He spoke emotionally about his late friend, the former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who prosecutors say was assassinated by a man posing as a police officer, alongside her husband, at their home in June. Martin acknowledged state senator John Hoffman who was seriously wounded, alongside his wife, by the alleged gunman. Hoffman was in attendance, Martin said.
“If I can leave you with one thing this morning, let it be something that Melissa knew,” he said. “Power is fleeting. We never know when we’ll have it again. So use your power. Use your power when you have it to make the biggest difference you can for as many people as you can.”
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump spent a lot of time today speaking in front of reporters. Earlier he signed two executive orders aimed at eliminating cashless bail for people accused of crimes in Washington DC and other jurisdictions, as well as an order instructing federal prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against individuals who burn American flags during protests. Trump also used the opportunity to repeat false claims about the homicide rate in the nation’s capital, renew his threat to send National Guard troops to blue-cities, and announce his intention for the justice department to sue California over it’s redistricting plan to counter Texas’ new GOP-drawn congressional maps.
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Later, the president welcomed South Korean president Lee Jae Myung to the White House, and used his Oval Office meeting to answer questions on some of the biggest foreign policy issues at the moment. This included re-affirming that he wants Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “work out their differences first” in a meeting without Trump. He then said, without much explanation, that there would be a “conclusive ending” to the Israel-Hamas conflict within the next three weeks.
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Beyond Washington, Kilmar Ábrego García – the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salavador earlier this year – has been detained after reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Baltimore on Monday, just three days after his release from criminal custody in Tennessee. Ábrego Garcia faces deportation to Uganda – which his lawyers are challenging – after recently declining an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges.
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Back in the capital, attorney general Pam Bondi said today that there have been 1,007 arrests in DC since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge earlier this month.
Trump makes misleading claims about crime in ‘red cities’
When asked if the president would consider sending national guard troops to “red cities” that are experiencing high crime, Trump said that “there aren’t that many of them”.
He then said “if you look at the top 25 cities that the crime, just about every one of those cities is run by Democrats”. But according to a report by Rochester Institute of Technology, which analysed FBI data from 2024, two of the cities in the list of highest homicide rates have Republican mayors. And out of the 24 cities in that list, six states are led by GOP governors.
The president continued to repeat the false claim that it’s been “many years” since DC experienced seven days without a murder. City police data shows that as recently as July of this year, the capital experienced a week without a homicide. There have also been several earlier periods throughout 2025 without a murder in DC for more than a seven day stretch.
Trump says ‘conclusive’ ending to Israel-Hamas conflict in ‘two to three weeks’
The president said a short while ago that the US is sending $60m worth of food and aid to Gaza, as the humanitarian crisis in the region continues.
The president then said the end of the conflict is in sight, but offered few details to expand on his reasoning:
I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending. It’s a hard thing to say, because they’ve been fighting for 1000s of years. You want to know that’s a that’s been a hotbed forever, but I think we’re doing a very good job. But it does have to it does have to end.
When Trump was asked about whether there was a “diplomatic push” to end the conflict, he simply punted to special envoy Steve Witkoff who also gave no further details, but offered vague and heaping praise on the president:
We wouldn’t be anywhere, but for the President’s truth [post] last week, which was a statement to Hamas that they better get their act together and get to the peace table. But for that, it would have been all stalled. So as usual, he is the man who moves it.
Trump adds that he has a “great relationship” with the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un. “I have a very good relationship. I understand them. I spent a lot of free time with them, talking about things that we probably aren’t supposed to talk about.”
The president is now talking about how his 2016 election victory averted a nuclear war between North and South Korea.
I think you would have had a nuclear war. It would have taken place, and it would have been horrendous for everybody, including them. It would have been very bad for them, because we would have had to enter the picture, and we are the most powerful nuclear country in the world by far.
Trump reaffirms that he’d like Putin and Zelenskyy to meet first
The president is now taking questions from reporters, and says that he’d like for Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet first.
“I may be there. I may not. I’ll see but I wanted them to work out their differences first, because it is ultimately between them,” he adds. “This is a whole new form of war, but it’s a violent war, and there’s been nothing like this since the second world war. So we’ll see what happens over the next week or two.”
Earlier, I spoke with Democratic congressman Glenn Ivey, who represents the district in Maryland where Kilmar Ábrego García and his family live.
Ivey said that Ábrego García’s detention today was a “total abuse of power” by the Trump administration, and ultimately a tactic to save them from “being embarrassed” in court. “They know they don’t have the goods, they don’t have the evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the congressman added, referring to Ábrego García’s pending criminal case in Tennessee.
According to Ivey, Ábrego García’s case has also cut through the political noise among his constituents. “It’s been on the front burner for a lot of people in the district who don’t necessarily always pay attention to what’s going on in politics,” he said, recalling Donald Trump’s meeting with president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. The congressman remembered how Trump’s friendliness with the Salvadoran leader in the Oval Office earlier this year – particularly claims that “homegrown” US criminals would be sent to the country – jolted many in his district. “I think folks know that that could be us. And so we need to try to nip this in the bud as fast as possible,” Ivey added.
On the phone, the congressman was also convinced that his district’s motivation to decry Ábrego García’s detention is unlikely to dampen. “I think if they [the administration] are waiting for people to forget about it or get tired of it, they’ve gotten a big surprise on that front,” he said.
Trump told reporters that he and his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae Myung would have very serious discussions on trade.
So far Lee has praised Trump as a “peacemaker” and said the US president is “the only person who can solve the North Korean issue”.
Lee added that he hoped to expand cooperation with the US Non shipbuilding and other manufacturing sectors.
A short while ago Donald Trump welcomed the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House. It’s their first meeting and comes at a time when the relationship between their countries is strained.
We’ll bring you any key lines that come out of their Oval Office meeting.
