The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War after President Donald Trump first floated the idea on Monday, according to a Fox News report. A White House official confirmed the plan to The Mirror US on Thursday.
The decision marks a stark U-turn from the president’s campaign promises in 2024 to pursue peace, and from his frequent criticisms of former President Joe Biden for driving the U.S. “closer to World War III than anybody can imagine.”
“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters this week, referring to programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion. The Trump administration has not revealed the reasons it believes the department’s name constitutes “woke ideology.” It comes after a lip reader revealed the chilling 3-word promise that Donald Trump whispered into Vladimir Putin’s ear at their Alaska summit.
The move follows a string of similar name-changing decisions by the Trump administration as a measure of projecting the president’s stance on specific policy issues. In January, Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. He also referred to his controversial July domestic spending bill as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which in recent days his administration has attempted to rebrand as the “working families tax cut.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also ordered the renaming of certain military vessels that previously bore the names of civil rights leaders, such as the USNS Harvey Milk. Last month, he renamed his conference room the “W.A.R. Room.” Hegseth has often proven to be concerned with the outward appearance of elements of his department, having even ordered a makeup studio to be installed inside the Pentagon and dictated which colors of nail polish are acceptable to be worn by Army soldiers.
Though restoring the name would require congressional action, the White House is reportedly exploring alternative methods to enact the change, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The decision to rename the Pentagon comes amid a broader push by Trump, Hegseth and their coalition to restore a “warrior ethos” to the federal government and America as a whole. It has included a purge of top military leaders whose views do not align with the president’s agenda.
“As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything,” Trump said last month, referring to the War Department established by Congress in 1789 to oversee the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. “I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
The administration has also sought to ban transgender individuals from voluntarily joining the military and remove those who are currently serving on the basis of a claim that they are medically unfit. The claim has been described by civil rights groups as false and a representation of illegal discrimination, according to Reuters.
“This is so stupid and it’s going to make us a laughing stock in front of both our allies and our enemies,” one user wrote on X on Thursday.
Posturing the top defense department in the nation in a more aggressive and offensive direction is at odds with promises and statements made by Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump lobbed frequent criticisms at Biden for the fact that, during his presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas was ignited. “(Biden) will drive us into World War III, and we’re closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,” Trump said, according to CNN.
Last August, while endorsing anti-war former Democratic Rep. Tusli Gabbard at a National Guard conference in Detroit, Trump claimed both Democrats and Independents would vote for him because of his plan to end wars. “We’re uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars,” he said of Gabbard’s endorsement. “When I’m back in the White House, we will expel the warmongers, the profiteers … and we will restore world peace.”
“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” Gabbard said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace.”
His decision in June to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities threw several of his most ardent, right-wing supporters into opposition, urging the president and his allies not to engage in foreign conflicts.
Trump, who claimed that he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war before taking office on Jan. 20,” had made little headway by early September in brokering peace between the two nations. He has also dubiously claimed that he has personally ended a handful of global wars during his second term.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said during his inaugural address. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”
It comes after Ukraine warned that Putin has a hit list of FIVE countries that he wants to invade next.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-warned-pentagon-name-change-1372151
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that would let the U.S. designate nations as state sponsors of wrongful detention, using the threat of associated sanctions to deter Americans from being detained abroad or taken hostage.
…. two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the order being signed cited China, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia as nations that could potentially face penalties under the new designation.
The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps. But they are, nevertheless, serious men, and they know an unserious man when they see one. For nearly a decade, they have taken Donald Trump’s measure, and they have clearly reached a conclusion: The president of the United States is not worthy of their respect.
Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing is the most recent evidence that the world’s authoritarians consider Trump a lightweight. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s maximum nepo baby, Kim Jong Un, gathered to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. (Putin’s Belarusian satrap, Alexander Lukashenko, was also on hand.) The American president was not invited: After all, what role did the United States play in defeating Japan and liberating Eurasia? Instead, Trump, much like America itself, was left to watch from the sidelines.
But the parade was worse than a mere snub. Putin, Xi, and Kim stood in solidarity while reviewing China’s military might only weeks after Putin came to Alaska and showed no interest in moving to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. The White House tried to spin that ill-advised summit into at least a draw between Putin and Trump, but when the Kremlin’s dictator shows up with no interest in negotiation, speaks first at a press conference, and then caps the day by declining a carefully planned lunch and flying home, that’s a humiliation, not an exchange of views.
Nor has Trump fared very well with the other two members of this cheery 21st-century incarnation of SPECTRE. In the midst of Trumpian chaos, Xi is adroitly positioning China as the new face of international stability and responsibility. He has even made a show of offering partnership to China’s rival and former enemy India: Chinese diplomats last month said that China stands with India against the American “bully” when Trump was, for some reason, trying to impose 50 percent tariffs on India.
Likewise, the North Koreans, after playing to Trump’s ego and his ignorance of international affairs during meetings in the president’s first term, have continued their march to a nuclear arsenal that within years could grow to be larger than the United Kingdom’s. Trump was certain that he could negotiate with Kim, but the perfumed days of “love letters” between Trump and Kim are long over. Pyongyang’s leadership seems to know that it costs them little to humor Trump politely, but that they should reserve serious discussion for the leaders of serious countries.
Trump responded to his exclusion from the gala in Beijing by acting exactly like the third-tier leader that Xi, Putin, and Kim seem to think he is. As the event was taking place, Trump took to his social-media site—of course—to express his hurt feelings with a cringe-inducing attempt at a zinger. “May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Now, the reality is that Russia, China, and North Korea are conspiring against America, but it is beneath both the dignity and the power of an American president to whine about it. Trump continued his unseemly carping with a demand that China recognize the valor of the Americans who died in the Pacific:
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!
This message does not exactly project confidence and leadership; instead, it sounds like the grousing of a man beset by insecurities. A more self-assured commander in chief would have ignored the parade and, if asked about it, would have said something to the effect that the United States has always respected the sacrifices of our allies in World War II. But not Trump: He petulantly declared that he would not have attended even if the cool kids had invited him.
Authoritarians are unfortunately in good company in treating Trump as an incompetent leader. Even America’s allies have recognized that Trump may be their formal partner, but that they mostly get things done with the American president by soothing his ego and working around him. After Trump emerged from the summit in Anchorage essentially parroting Putin’s talking points, seven top European leaders rushed to Washington to tell Trump that he had done well and that they truly, really respected him, but that perhaps he should hold off on being a co-signer of Kremlin policy.
Trump’s damage to American power and prestige would be less severe if the president had a foreign policy and a team to execute it. He has neither: Trump ran for president mostly for personal reasons, including to stay out of prison, and his foreign policy, such as it is, is merely an extension of his personal interests. He holds summits, issues social-media pronouncements, and engages in photo ops mostly, it seems, either to burnish his claim to a Nobel Prize or to change the news cycle when issues such as the economy (or the Jeffrey Epstein files) get too much traction.
Worse, Trump is no longer surrounded by people who care about foreign affairs or can competently step in and create consistent policy. In his first term, Trump had a secretary of defense, James Mattis, who helped to create a national-defense strategy, a document that Trump might have ignored but was at least promulgated to a national-security establishment that needed direction from someone, somewhere. Now, at the Pentagon, Trump has Pete Hegseth, who shows little apparent inclination or ability to think about complexities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was supposed to be one of the new “adults in the room,” but he has instead become a man in a Velcro suit, with the president sticking jobs and responsibilities onto him without any further guidance. He has been reduced to sitting glumly in White House press sprays with foreign leaders while Trump embarrasses himself and his guests. Meanwhile, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is spending her time trying to root out the spies she thinks hate the president. Unfortunately, the agents she’s hunting are Americans, which must bring a smile to Xi’s face and perhaps even produce a belly laugh from former KGB officer Putin.
America is adrift. It has no coherent foreign policy, no team of senior professionals managing its national defense and diplomacy, and a president who has little interest in the world beyond what it can offer him. Little wonder that the men who gathered in Beijing—three autocrats whose nations are collectively pointing many hundreds of nuclear weapons at the United States—feel free to act as if they don’t even think twice about Trump or the country he leads.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/trump-parade-china-putin-xi-kim/684113
The neofascist takeover of America — of our cities, universities, media, law firms, museums, civil service, and public prosecutors who tried to hold Trump and Trump’s vigilantes accountable to the law — worsens by the day.
As I’ve traveled across the country peddling my book, trying to explain how this catastrophe happened and what we can do about it, I’ve found many Americans in shock and outrage.
“How could it have happened so fast?” they ask. I explain that it actually occurred slowly and incrementally over many years until our entire political-economic system became so fragile that a sociopathic demagogue could bring much of it down.
Some people I speak with are still in denial and disbelief. “It’s not as bad as the press makes it out to be,” they say. I tell them that it is — even worse.
Others are in despair — heartbroken and immobilized. “Nothing can be done,” they say. I tell them that hopelessness plays into the hands of Trump and his lackeys who want us to think that the game is over and they’ve won. But we can’t let them. The stakes are too high. Hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Rest assured. The seeds of Trump’s destruction have already been sown. He will overreach. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of birthright citizenship, for example, and Trump announces he’s not bound by the Supreme Court, the uproar will be deafening.
Or the economy will bite him in the butt. As prices continue to rise and job growth continues to slow — due to Trump’s bonkers import taxes (tariffs), his attempt to take over the Fed, and his attacks on immigrants — America will fall into the dread trap of “stagflation”: stagnation and inflation. After months of this, his base is likely to turn on him — remember, many voted for him because he promised to bring prices down — and he and his Republican lackeys in Congress will be toast in the 2026 midterms.
Or his brazen corruption will do him in (he’s personally raking in hundreds of millions from crypto, for example). Or Putin will do him in (if Ukraine falls to Russia or an emboldened Russia strikes Lithuania). Or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
He no longer has any truth-tellers to advise him — he has purged all of them. And a president who’s flying blind, without anyone around him to tell him he’s about to crash, will inevitably crash. Many innocent people will likely suffer “collateral” damage. But at least the nation will see him for who he is and consign him to the dustbin of history.
None of this argues for complacency. We must continue to fight — demonstrate, phone your representatives and senators, boycott corporations and organizations that are caving in to tyranny, protect the vulnerable, make good trouble.
But please do not fall into denial or despair, and don’t let anyone else.
House Republicans have launched an investigation into Wikipedia, a long-standing target of conservative criticism.
For several months, Elon Musk and other conservatives have waged a campaign to portray the online encyclopedia as an oppressive tool of leftist manipulation.
Now a House committee is investigating allegations of “anti-Israel bias” at Wikipedia.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky and South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who leads a subcommittee on cybersecurity, sent a letter to Wikipedia’s CEO demanding data, documents and answers to questions stemming primarily from allegations — laid out in a March Anti-Defamation League report — that Wikipedia editors were permitting anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitic themes to spread on the platform.
Wikipedia officials have refuted the report, saying it included “unsupported and problematic claims.” But the letter says the report “raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.” The lawmakers also reference an Atlantic Council report that found pro-Kremlin forces have used artificial intelligence tools to help whitewash and rewrite the story of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“The House Oversight Committee is investigating manipulation efforts to determine the role and methods of foreign individuals, those at academic institutions subsidized by United States taxpayer dollars, as well as Wikipedia’s awareness and response,” according to a release from Comer’s office.
The lawmakers clearly want to target specific Wikipedia editors. Along with any documents related to state-sponsored efforts to manipulate Wikipedia entries, they’re demanding “records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors” whose conduct has been evaluated by Wikipedia’s committee for resolving editorial disputes.
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, told The Hill that it welcomes “the opportunity to respond to the Committee’s questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform.”
The investigation is sure to raise questions, considering that Republicans have spent the past several years denouncing anti-misinformation efforts and demonizing efforts to root out foreign manipulation campaigns such as those that have been known to thrive on MAGA-friendly platforms like the Musk-owned X.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/house-republican-wikipedia-israel-bias-probe-rcna228120
President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made a harsh statement about US President Donald Trump. In his opinion, the American leader is “objectively a Soviet or Russian agent,” reports Euronews.
“The supreme leader of the world’s largest superpower is objectively a Soviet or Russian asset,” said de Sousa on August 27 during a speech in Castelo de Vide.
Trump’s efforts to present himself as the main mediator in reconciling Ukraine and Russia did not make a good impression on the Portuguese president. De Sousa noted that Trump’s attempts to “settle” the war were not beneficial for Ukraine.
“Objectively, the new US leadership strategically contributed to Russia,” he added.
As an example, de Sousa reminded that “every day” there are new threats from the US to impose sanctions on the Kremlin. However, in reality, none of Trump’s promises to strengthen sanctions had been fulfilled.
According to the Portuguese leader, Trump tries to play the role of an “arbiter,” but at the same time wants to negotiate “only with one side.” Kyiv and its European allies are literally forced to pressure Washington to also take part in the negotiations.
De Sousa added that Europe downplayed “the importance of Trump and Trumpism” and also did not believe that the balance of power in the White House and US policy could change so drastically after Trump came to power.
Meanwhile, media write that US President Donald Trump is not satisfied with the demands of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Europe for ending the war. He wants peace at any cost.
In recent days, Trump has expressed in private conversations his frustration that his loud diplomatic efforts have not brought results — but he blames not Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/portuguese-president-calls-trump-soviet-or-1756408421.html
Trump cabinet officials told a federal appeals court that ruling president’s global tariffs illegal would seriously harm US foreign policy, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warning of “dangerous diplomatic embarrassment.”
The administration on Friday filed statements by Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. The court is expected to decide soon whether President Donald Trump exceeded his authority to impose tariffs under a 1977 emergency powers law.
Bessent, Lutnick and Rubio’s statements were filed in support of a request that any ruling against the administration be immediately put on hold until the US Supreme Court issues a final decision. Failing to do so would have “devastating and dire consequences,” Lutnick said.
During July 31 oral arguments before the Federal Circuit, the administration’s claims of broad tariff power were met with skepticism, suggesting the judges might side with separate challenges filed by a group of small businesses and a coalition of Democratic-led states. Friday’s filing seems to suggest the administration is worried about precisely that outcome.
The cabinet secretaries said that a ruling invalidating tariffs would undo months of negotiations with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other nations. Bessent said the president’s ability to quickly impose tariffs had prevented other nation’s from responding in kind.
“Suspending the effectiveness of the tariffs would expose the United States to the risk of retaliation by other countries based on a perception that the United States lacks the capacity to respond rapidly to retaliation,” the Treasury secretary said.
Trump’s tariffs were ruled illegal in May by the US Court of International Trade, which found that tariff power belongs to Congress and Trump improperly claimed authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That decision was put on hold by the Federal Circuit for the appeal, allowing the administration to continue threatening tariffs during the negotiations cited by Bessent, Lutnick and Rubio.
Lutnick said tariffs had brought foreign powers to the negotiating table “in ways that no other president came close to achieving” and told the court that an adverse ruling would “send a signal to the world that the United States lacks the resolve to defend its own economic and national security.”
Rubio said Trump used his IEEPA authority in connection with highly sensitive negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and claimed there could be “severe consequences for ongoing peace negotiations and human rights abuses” if the court ruled against the administration.
Acomment suggesting President Donald Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has raised eyebrows.
Social media users have reacted to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, suggesting that the president has been overlooked for the prestigious award.
Why It Matters
Since 2018, Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which recognizes an individual or organization that has managed to “advance fellowship between nations,” multiple times but has not won.
Only four U.S. presidents have won the award, which is among the world’s most prominent international honors. President Barack Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, eight months into his presidency—a move Donald Trump Jr. described as “affirmative action.”
In the past few months, Trump and his allies have argued in support of the president’s worthiness as a candidate, citing foreign policy interventions his administration has been involved in.
What To Know
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Witkoff said: “There’s only one thing I wish for—that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel award was ever talked about. Your success is game-changing out in the world today, and I hope everybody wakes up and realizes that.”
Several campaign groups and figures responded negatively to Witkoff’s comments.
The X account Republicans Against Trump wrote, “Nobel Peace Prize for what exactly?”
Call to Activism, a progressive political account, called the applause that followed Witkoff’s comments “North Korea-style” and “terrifying.”
User Alok Bhatt told 91,000 followers, “It is astonishing to see the great American empire crumble before our eyes—brick by brick, piece by piece.”
User Ron Smith, a self-described “proud Democrat,” wrote, “Hard to believe this is not a North Korean cabinet.”
What People Are Saying
Mark Shanahan, who teaches American politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K., told Newsweek: “The Trump Cabinet is an exercise in obsequious forelock tugging where each member aims to outdo the rest in fawning flattery at the feet of the president. For all his talk, Donald Trump has done little to end the cruelly attritional war in Ukraine following Putin’s invasion, while he continues to support Netanyahu’s total war in Gaza.
“Nobel seeks to support fraternity between nations. With his America First policies, 47 is the antithesis of this.”
President Donald Trump complained about the prize on Truth Social in June: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a July news briefing: “It is well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Representative Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, wrote on X in June: “I’ve officially nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize twice! He has done more for world peace than any modern leader.”
What Happens Next
The deadline to nominate candidates for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize passed on January 31. Nobel Prize laureates are scheduled to be announced on October 10, with an award ceremony following on December 10 in Oslo, Norway.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-nobel-peace-prize-steve-witkoff-2119969
