The Trump administration has cut education funding. It has fired federal workers. It has slashed scientific research grants, eliminated social services, and demanded fiscal restraint across every corner of the federal government. It has now spent $50 million renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War and is asking Congress to spend potentially hundreds of millions more to make that name change permanent.

That is not fiscal restraint. That is political theater funded by American taxpayers.

The Pentagon has sent a legislative proposal to Congress asking it to codify the Department of War name. The proposal would require approximately 7,600 conforming changes to federal law. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that full implementation could cost $125 million or more, and potentially hundreds of millions if implemented broadly. The CBO noted its estimate is uncertain because the Defense Department has not even provided information about how it plans to implement the change. Fifty million dollars has already been spent. The final bill is unknown. And Senate Democrats who called for a formal cost assessment at the time of Trump's executive order were told the costs would not be available until after fiscal year 2026 is completed.

The name Department of Defense was chosen deliberately. In 1947, when Congress unified the military services under a single civilian department, it chose that name to signal something specific about American strategic values: that the United States builds military strength in order to defend peace, not to pursue war. That distinction mattered then. It matters now. Renaming the department the Department of War does not make the American military stronger. It does not improve readiness, recruitment, or capability. It signals to allies who depend on American partnership and to adversaries who watch American posture that the United States has chosen to define its military mission by the pursuit of war rather than the defense of peace. That is not a symbolic distinction. It is a strategic one with real consequences for how America is perceived and treated in the world.

The hypocrisy is not incidental. It is central. This is an administration that has cited fiscal responsibility to justify cutting Medicaid, eliminating research grants, firing government scientists, and reducing services that millions of Americans depend on. It has done all of that while spending $50 million on new signage, updated websites, revised social media accounts, and a new Department of War plaque installed at the Pentagon's main entrance. It is now asking Congress to authorize spending that could reach hundreds of millions more to make those changes permanent in federal law. If fiscal restraint is a genuine governing principle it must apply to political theater as well as to programs that feed children and fund cancer research.

Congress has not approved this name change. It is not law. The executive order that initiated it was signed without congressional authorization. The legislative proposal now before Congress is a request, not a mandate. Congress can and should reject it. The $50 million already spent cannot be recovered. The hundreds of millions that codification would cost can still be stopped.

Sign this petition to demand Congress reject the Pentagon's legislative proposal to codify the Department of War name change, call on the administration to restore the Department of Defense name and redirect remaining renaming funds to programs that serve the American people, and affirm that fiscal restraint must apply equally to political theater and to the social programs this administration has cut in its name.