HegSeth orders the name of the Harvey Milk Harvey Milk Battered Shipy Harvey Harvey Milk Harvey Milk: NPR

Washington – Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a very rare decision that will remove the ship from the nickname a militant of killed homosexuals who served as a sailor during the Korean War.

US officials say that the secretary of the navy, John Phelan, was a small team to rename the replenishment oil and that a new name is expected this month. The officials, who spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations, said that the following name had not yet been chosen.

The change was presented in an internal memo which declared that the officials defended the action as a decision to align themselves with the objectives of President Donald Trump and Hegseth to “restore warlike culture”.

He marks the latest decision of Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media from reference to diversity, equity and inclusion. And this comes during the month of pride – the same timing as the Pentagon campaign to force transgender troops outside the American army.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that Hegseth was “determined to ensure that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets reflect the priorities of the commander-in-chief, the history of our nation and warrior ethics”.

Phelan's office did not respond to a request for comments on the decision, which was first reported by Militar.com.

The USNS Harvey Milk was appointed in 2016 by the secretary of the time, Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the class of John Lewis' Oilers are named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.

Milk, which was represented by Sean Penn in a 2008 Oscar -winning film, served for four years in the navy before he was forced to be gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to the public service.

Milk has sat on the San Francisco supervisor council and sponsored a bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in public housing, housing and employment. He passed and the mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, signed it.

On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were murdered by Dan White, a former supervisor from the dissatisfied city who voted against the Milk bill.

The former lecturer of the Chamber, Nancy Pelosi, a democrat representing San Francisco, said Tuesday in a press release that “this decision of wickedness does not strengthen our national security or the ethics of the” warrior “. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: honoring the inheritance of those who worked to build a better country.”

California governor Gavin Newsom also criticized the move, saying that Milk was a veteran of the Korean War Combat whose commander called him “exceptional”.

“The undressing of a navy ship will erase its inheritance as a American icon, but that reveals Trump's contempt for the very values ​​that our veterans fight to protect,” wrote the Democrat on X.

The ship was baptized in 2021, and during the ceremony, the secretary of Navy, Carlos Del Toro, said that he wanted to be at the event “not only to modify the wrongs of the past, but to draw inspiration from all our LGBTQ community leaders who also served in the Navy, in uniform today and in civil work too.”

The ship is operated by Military Sedift Command, with a crew of around 125 civilian sailors. The Navy says that she conducted her first mission of replenishment at sea in the fall of 2024, while operating in the Capes of Virginia. He continued to replenish the navy ships at sea off the east coast until he begins the interview planned at the Alabama shipyard in Mobile, in Alabama, earlier this year.

Although the name change is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two naval ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove the Confederate Names from US military facilities.

The USS Chancelorsville – named after the Battle of the Civil War – was renamed USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and a former reduced person. And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic ship with the name of a Confederate sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific cards at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The maritime tradition indicates why renamed it from ships is so unusual, which suggests that changing a name is bad luck and tries the remuneration of the gods of the sea.