Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to rename a naval vessel named after gay rights activist Harvey Milk, with several other ships honoring civil rights activists and women also potentially being rechristened.
The move targeting the ship named after the gay rights icon comes as LGBTQ+ communities kick off pride month celebrations across the country. The step furthers Hegseth's agenda to stomp out DEI initiatives at the Pentagon, which has included removing books from service academies and scrubbing some mentions of women and people of color in the armed services from DOD websites.
Two defense officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss a situation that is still evolving, said that USNS Harvey Milk name change will likely be announced around June 13, and that six other John Lewis-class replenishment and resupply ships — all named after civil rights leaders and prominent women — could also be renamed in the coming weeks and months.
The officials said that more ships might follow in the coming months. Military.com and CBS News first reported some details of the plans.
“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos," Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement. "Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”
The other ships in the class are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Cesar Chavez, USNS Medgar Evers, USNS Dolores Huerta and the USNS Lucy Stone. There is no timeline yet for the renaming of these ships, one of the officials said.
Milk served in the Navy before his political career. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in City Hall in 1978 by a former member of the board.
The planned erasure of barrier-shattering historical figures from the vessels is just the latest move in Hegseth’s mission to stamp out any trace of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Defense Department.
Previous efforts in that direction have proven controversial for Hegseth, who came under scrutiny for stripping mentions of key figures from military websites — including baseball legend and World War II veteran Jackie Robinson — eventually prompting the reinstatement of some webpages and even eliciting an admission of error from the Department of Defense.
California politicians quickly criticized the Navy’s planned renaming.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who shares a home city of San Francisco with Milk, sharply criticized the move as a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream” in a statement on Tuesday.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world – but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country,” Pelosi said, encouraging the Navy to “reconsider this egregious decision.”
“Stripping his name from a Navy ship won’t erase his legacy as an American icon,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement, “but it does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans fight to protect.”
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