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Trump Makes Announcements: The Department of War Order and the 2026 G20 in Miami, Sep. 5, 2025

September 5, 2025 · The White House · 1:26:53

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump signed bills and executive orders at the White House on September 5, 2025, in a session carried in full on the White House channel. Staff Secretary Will Scharf presented the items in turn. First came H.R. 2808, the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, whose lead sponsor, Congressman John Rose, said the law would end the buying and selling of homebuyers’ personal information that had brought them “innumerable phone calls and text messages” when they tried to buy a home.

The centerpiece was the executive order on the department’s name. Scharf recited the lineage: “From 1789 until 1947, our nation won some of its greatest military victories under the direction of a Secretary of War operating within a Department of War. Today, with this executive order, you will authorize the current Secretary of Defense and the current Department of Defense to once again embrace this great lineage and once again be named the Secretary of War and the Department of War.” The President said the change had been talked about “for months”: “We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go, well, could we change the name to Department of Defense? So we’re going [back to] Department of War.”

Secretary Pete Hegseth framed the order as restoration: “This name change is not just about renaming. It’s about restoring… restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force. So, at your direction, Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not to lose… Maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” The President also announced that the 2026 G20 summit would be hosted in Miami, with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett involved in the preparations, as he stated it.

Why it matters

The September 5 order is the legal act behind the name this site now uses throughout its defense record — Secretary of War, Department of War — and Hegseth’s remarks at the signing are the fullest statement of the doctrine claimed for it. The same session put a consumer-privacy law on the books and placed the 2026 G20 in Miami.

Scoreboard watch

This signing session is a scoreboard candidate on three dated actions: the executive order authorizing the Secretary of War / Department of War names (September 5, 2025), the signing of the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, and the announcement of Miami as host of the 2026 G20 summit — each to be checked against the published texts and the summit’s staging.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Makes Announcements, Sep. 5, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; the upload’s description places the event at the White House). All characterizations as stated by the participants in the broadcast.