The House Committee On Armed Services voted along party lines late Tuesday to permanently rename the Department of Defense the Department of War, moving the proposal into the annual defense policy bill after a marathon session that stretched deep into the night.

That matters now because the committee’s action turns a symbolic fight into live legislation, with the Pentagon’s legal name at stake and the broader National Defense Authorization Act still moving through Congress. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly posted that “The Department of War will officially be restored soon,” a sign of how closely the administration is tying itself to the push.

The amendment was introduced by Representative Ronny Jackson, who argued that “Restoring the name Department of War sends an unmistakable signal to the world” and that “Deterrence only works when adversaries believe America is willing to fight and win to secure its interests.” The move would codify an executive order Donald Trump signed last fall, and it reaches back to a label the U.S. military bureaucracy last used in the 1940s.

But the vote in committee does not finish the job. The Pentagon’s legal name will not change unless both chambers of Congress approve it, and the Senate is expected to resist. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a full renaming could cost as much as $125 million, a figure that gives the proposal a fiscal price tag as well as a political one.

The line of criticism inside the committee was sharp. Representative Adam Smith called the effort one of the dumbest things that has been done by this administration and said, “It’s semantic nonsense at a time when we have a lot of substantive arguments.” Representative Pat Ryan, one of a dozen Democrats who voted against the broader bill, was even blunter: “It’s performative bulls--t.”

Ryan said he thought “ending on that performative note summed up the whole situation,” a remark that captured how the debate split between symbolism and substance. The House Armed Services Committee approved the broader National Defense Authorization Act in a bipartisan 44-12 vote, but the renaming provision now has to survive the rest of Congress before anyone can start swapping signs on the Pentagon.

For now, the committee has done what it could: it has put the Department of War name back into the legislative pipeline. The harder test comes next, and the Senate is the place where the proposal is most likely to bog down.