“Shameful, vindictive erasure”: Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk’s name from Navy ship

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to remove the name of gay rights icon and Navy veteran Harvey Milk from one of its ships.

Per a report from Military.com, the order was passed down in a memo from Navy Secretary John Phelan. The memo said that the redesignation of the oil tanker USNS Harvey Milk was an attempt to get into “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”

A defense official who spoke to the outlet said that the directive came from Hegseth, adding that the Pentagon had intentionally timed the announcement to coincide with the start of Pride Month. The renaming is expected to become official next week.

Milk was the first openly gay man to hold elected office in the United States after winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He was assassinated less than one year after assuming office. Milk was also a commissioned naval officer who served in the Korean War, and came from a family with a history of service in the branch.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district contains much of San Francisco, called the decision “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

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

Hegseth has made the war against “wokeness” and the restoration of what he calls a “warrior ethos” central to his scandal-ridden tenure. This decision was reportedly framed as part of that effort. On Tuesday, CBS News reported that the Navy was looking into changing the names of other ships named after prominent civil rights leaders and icons, including Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriett Tubman, Cesar Chavez and Medgar Evers.

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