Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a extremely uncommon transfer that may strip the ship of the moniker of a slain homosexual rights activist who served as a sailor in the course of the Korean Warfare.
US officers say Navy Secretary John Phelan put collectively a small workforce to rename the replenishment oiler and {that a} new identify is predicted this month.
The officers, who spoke on situation of anonymity to debate inner deliberations, stated the following identify had not but been chosen.
The change was specified by an inner memo that officers stated defended the motion as a transfer to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth’s goals to “re-establish the warrior culture.”
It marks the newest transfer by Hegseth and the broader Trump administration to purge all applications, insurance policies, books and social media mentions of references to variety, fairness and inclusion. And it comes throughout Delight Month — the identical timing because the Pentagon’s marketing campaign to drive transgender troops out of the US navy.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell stated in a press release that 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.”
Phelan’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the choice, which was first reported by Army.com.
The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who stated on the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers can be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.
Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 film, served for 4 years within the Navy earlier than he was compelled out for being homosexual.
He later turned one of many first brazenly homosexual candidates elected to public workplace.
Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a invoice banning discrimination based mostly on sexual orientation in public lodging, housing and employment. It handed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into regulation.
On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone had been assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former metropolis supervisor who forged the only real vote in opposition to Milk’s invoice.
Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat representing San Francisco, stated in a press release Tuesday that “this spiteful transfer doesn’t strengthen our nationwide safety 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.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom additionally slammed the transfer, saying Milk was a Korean Warfare fight veteran whose commander referred to as him “outstanding.”
“Stripping his name from a Navy ship won’t erase his legacy as an American icon, but it does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans fight to protect,” the Democrat wrote on X.
The ship was christened in 2021, and in the course of the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro stated he wished to be on the occasion “not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future.”
The ship is operated by Army Sealift Command, with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners.
The Navy says it performed its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024, whereas working within the Virginia Capes.
It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast till it started scheduled upkeep at Alabama Shipyard in Cell, Alabama, earlier this 12 months.
Whereas the renaming is uncommon, the Biden administration additionally modified the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as a part of the hassle to take away Accomplice names from U.S. navy installations.
The USS Chancellorsville — named for the Civil Warfare battle — was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved particular person.
And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship initially named after a Accomplice sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the primary scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean ground.
Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so uncommon, suggesting that altering a reputation is unhealthy luck and tempts retribution from the ocean gods.
