Staggering cost of Pentagon push to change DoD to 'Department of War' revealed

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks about Javelin anti-tank missiles next to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in Washington D.C., U.S., August 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

One of the more high-profile changes to the federal government that President Donald Trump made early on in his second term was to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. The total cost could be in the nine-figure range.

That's according to an estimate released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and posted to X by CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane. The CBO estimated the cost under two scenarios — a per-person approach and a per-organization approach. MacFarlane crunched the numbers and estimated that the name change could cost anywhere from $10 million at the low end to $125 million on the high end.

The new estimate sparked outrage among multiple elected officials, journalists and others on social media. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) — who is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and Purple Heart veteran — noted that the $125 million cost could be used to "feed 55,000 hungry Veterans."

"Find someone who loves you the way this administration loves wasting money," New York Times contributor Molly Jong-Fast wrote on X.

Army veteran Drew Rogers, who describes himself as a "former Republican" on X, noted that the Trump administration's attempted name change isn't official without an act of Congress. He called the name change "illegal" and said all money dedicated to the effort should be "swiftly refunded to taxpayers."

"It’s DoD until the legislative (lawmaking) branch of the U.S. gov’t says otherwise," Rogers wrote.

Rogers' point was recently made in December, when the House of Representatives was writing the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to fund the military through next year. Despite Trump's executive order announcing he was changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, the final version of the NDAA used the old name, meaning the Pentagon will be formally known as the Department of Defense through the next calendar year.

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