Hegseth moves to rename Navy ship honoring gay rights icon Harvey Milk

The Pentagon is planning to strip the name from a Navy ship that honors the gay rights icon Harvey Milk and could expand the purge to include other vessels recognizing prominent civil rights figures, defense officials said Tuesday, the latest move by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to impose the Trump administration’s will on America’s culture wars.

Deliberations, officials said, are ongoing after a recent order by Hegseth to Navy Secretary John Phelan, with the decision to be announced as soon as mid-June, to coincide with Pride Month, which President Donald Trump has rejected celebrating. It was unclear when - or even if - any other Navy vessels honoring civil rights figures could see their titles changed, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, released a statement acknowledging that a review is underway that could result in the renaming of Defense Department installations and resources, though it does not specify which ones.

“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,” Parnell’s statement said. “Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”

Stuart Milk, Harvey Milk’s nephew and the executive chair of the Harvey Milk Foundation, said in a statement that the Milk family and the foundation were “heartbroken” to hear about the Pentagon’s recommendation to remove his uncle’s name from the ship.

“His legacy has stood as a proud and bright light for the men and women who serve in our nation’s military - including those who have served on the USNS Harvey Milk - and a reminder that no barriers of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or physical infirmity will restrain their human spirit,” Stuart Milk said. “Harvey Milk’s legacy is certainly enhanced and celebrated by a U.S. Naval Ship, however his legacy will not be silenced or diminished by the renaming of that Naval ship. Rather such an action would only serve to prove that Harvey Milk style hope will continue to endure and inspire across the globe.”

Navy officials referred questions to the Navy secretary’s team, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The impending move to rename the USNS Harvey Milk was first reported by Military.com.

Milk, a Navy veteran who served during the Korean War, was 48 years old when he was killed in San Francisco in 1978 after rising to prominence as an activist and politician who fiercely championed gay rights.

The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary under President Barack Obama, and is part of a class of oilers recognizing the late congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia), whose name is on the first ship in the class. Each vessel in the class recognizes a civil rights leader, including former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, former chief justice of the United States Earl Warren, and women’s rights activists Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth.

Future vessels in the class have been named for Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first African American justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Supreme Court justice for 27 years until her death in 2020; Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist who worked to free enslaved people via the Underground Railroad; and Dolores Huerta, a labor activist who organized farmer workers and women.

CBS News, citing documents it had obtained, first reported Tuesday that other vessels in the class also could be renamed.

The naming of the Harvey Milk and several other vessels during the Obama administration drew criticism from some Republicans and military veterans, who said they found the decisions political. Mabus defended his choices, telling the Associated Press in an interview at the time that “you have to represent all the values that we hold as Americans.”

“These are American heroes too, just in a different arena,” Mabus said then.

Thomas Oppel, who served as Mabus’s chief of staff, said in an interview Tuesday that the idea behind the naming convention of the John Lewis class of ships, in particular, was to highlight those who would not typically be recognized by the Navy in such a way. Hegseth, he assessed, “appears to be on a rampage” to eliminate anyone from U.S. history who is not a heterosexual White man.

Oppel, a Democrat now serving in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, said there has long been a superstition that renaming a naval vessel brings bad luck. The Biden administration renamed two - the warship USS Chancellorsville and the research ship USNS Maury - in 2023, citing their association with the Confederacy, but Oppel drew a distinction between that decision and the Trump administration’s moves now.

“There have been gay members of the military since there was the first military, and to ignore that or to erase it is just bigoted and small-minded,” Oppel said of the Harvey Milk renaming.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, also criticized the decision, calling it a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

“Our military is the most powerful in the world - but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” Pelosi said. “Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”

The decision to rename the USNS Harvey Milk follows other moves by Hegseth to restore the names of two Army installations - Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia - that were renamed during the Biden administration due to their associations with Confederate military leaders.

Under President Joe Biden, Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty, and Benning became Fort Moore, recognizing the service of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife, Julia. Hal Moore, who died in 2017, was recognized for valor in Vietnam with a Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor in the military’s hierarchy of combat awards.

To sidestep the appearance of returning those base names to their Confederate legacies, Hegseth and his team said that from now on Bragg would recognize Private 1st Class Roland L. Bragg, a U.S. soldier who was decorated for valor in World War II, and Benning would recognize Cpl. Fred Benning, who received the Distinguished Service Cross for actions in World War I. It was not clear Tuesday whether Hegseth’s team is seeking to restore the old names of other installations renamed under Biden in similar fashion.

Upon taking office in January, Hegseth’s team launched a sprawling, chaotic effort to remove references to diversity across the Defense Department, erasing photographs, webpages and other content. Hegseth also has fired numerous senior military leaders, including a disproportionate number of women and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is Black, accusing most of being too focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth has said. “I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose.”

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Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.