As part of his ongoing war against diversity, equity, and inclusion, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk, the ship honoring the slain gay rights icon and Navy veteran.
A defense official confirmed the decision to multiple outlets, noting that the timing was deliberate, with June being Pride Month.
Military.com first reported the expected name change, and CBS News later obtained internal Navy documents detailing rollout timelines for announcing the new name. So far, the replacement name has not been disclosed.
USNS Harvey Milk
USNS Harvey Milk is part of the John Lewis class of oilers, a group of ships named after trailblazing civil rights figures. Others in the class are named after Earl Warren, Robert F. Kennedy, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth. But now, all are under threat of being renamed.
And CBS reports that Harvey Milk is just the start. Other ships on Hegseth’s target list include those named after Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Dolores Huerta, and Medgar Evers. All of it is part of a broader push to erase progressive and civil rights figures from military honors.
Ship renamings are rare and haven’t happened at the direction of a defense secretary in recent memory. The last renaming in 2023 followed a congressional commission’s recommendation to scrub Confederate-linked names from military assets, including USS Chancellorsville and USNS Maury.
But this time, the motivation isn’t historical reckoning. It’s political retribution.
Hegseth’s order is part of a sweeping effort to wipe out so-called “wokeism” in the ranks, under the banner of restoring “warrior culture.” Since taking office, he’s purged DEI content from military websites, banned observances like Pride Month, and sought to undo civil rights advances. He once even suggested renaming the B-29 Enola Gay—not because of history… but because “gay” is in the name.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world – but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. “It is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”
Harvey Milk was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, and the first in California. He served in the Navy as a diving officer during the Korean War, at a time when gay service members had to serve in silence. In 1955, after being questioned by Navy investigators about his sexuality, he was forced to resign with the rank of lieutenant junior grade.
Harvey Milk poses in front of his camera shop in San Francisco in 1977.
After the military pushed him out, Milk became a pioneering activist. He helped form the Castro Village Association—one of the first LGBTQ-owned business networks in the country—and was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He championed anti-discrimination laws and helped defeat Proposition 6, which would have required the city’s schools to fire gay teachers.
Less than a year into office, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by a disgruntled former supervisor. The killer, Dan White, received a sentence of just 7 years, sparking mass protests.
When the Navy named a ship after Milk in 2021, former Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he “made a difference” and called him the kind of leader the Navy should honor. But that was under President Joe Biden, of course. Under President Donald Trump, the message has flipped entirely.
Since Hegseth’s appointment, the Pentagon has scrubbed mentions of heritage and awareness months. His “Identity Months Dead at DoD” directive banned any use of official time or resources on observances like Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Pride Month.
He’s even tried to purge military websites of references to key civil rights figures—people like Milk—whose very existence represents the values that Hegseth and Trump seem determined to erase.
The renaming of USNS Harvey Milk isn’t an isolated decision. It’s just one piece of a larger, spiteful campaign to rewrite military history in the image of grievance politics.
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