Republican Candidates Aren’t Exactly Embracing the ‘Department of War’

Republicans say they love President Donald Trump’s decision to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War.

Their candidates just haven’t all gotten the message — at least in the fine print of their campaigns.

For years, when political candidates have featured pictures of themselves in military uniform in campaign materials, they have been required to include a small disclaimer that the use of the uniform does not imply an endorsement from any branch of the military or the “Department of Defense.” The notice has long been perfunctory and likely overlooked by the vast majority of viewers.

But Trump’s decision last year to unilaterally rename DOD, despite needing congressional authority to legally do so, has put some Republican veterans running for office in an awkward position, caught between longstanding precedent and the president’s wishes. The party can’t quite agree on how best to handle it.

Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, for instance, calls it the “Department of Defense” on his campaign website, even though he is a staunch defender of the president and has already received Trump’s endorsement. So do Reps. Eli Crane and Gabe Evans and Republican candidates, including Eric Conroy and Kevin Lincoln.

Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Navy veteran, uses the president’s new moniker on her campaign website. And Eric Flores, an Army veteran and one of the GOP’s top recruits of 2026, used “Department of War” in a TV ad his campaign is running this week in South Texas. (Flores sticks to “Department of Defense” on his campaign website, however.)

Even if the Department of Defense has not been legally renamed, the Trump administration has erased most mentions of it, identifying it as the “Department of War” online. The department’s secretary, Pete Hegseth, even affixed signs with the new name outside of the Pentagon last year.

Some candidates can’t choose between “Department of Defense” and “Department of War” even within the same ad. Laurie Buckhout, running in the battleground of North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, first used DOD in a disclaimer in a digital ad her campaign ran last month, when showing a pair of images of her in her Army uniform.

But seconds later, the ad showed footage of a sign reading “Department of War” as it was being screwed into a wall, with a disclaimer saying the images should not be taken as an endorsement from the newly named entity.

“Appointed to the Department of War by President Trump,” a narrator said in the ad.

The language that campaigns choose to use in a brief disclaimer is not exactly the most important decision they will make in the 2026 midterms. Some Republican strategists said the disclaimers have long been such an afterthought that the campaigns might not even have noticed that they still name the “Department of Defense” instead of Trump’s preferred name.

But the presence of the altered name nonetheless underscores the attentiveness of some Republican candidates to all of Trump’s directives, proving even the smallest parts of a political campaign can be modified to show loyalty to the president.

The reason these ads include a disclaimer appears to be the result of a longstanding directive from the Department of Defense that allows former members of the military to use images of their time in the armed services but only under certain conditions.

“Any such military information must be accompanied by prominent and clearly displayed disclaimer that neither the military information nor photographs imply endorsement by the Department of Defense or their particular military department,” the directive read.