U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth arrives for his Senate Armed Companies affirmation listening to on Capitol Hill on January 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Photos)
Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take away the identify of homosexual rights icon and Navy veteran Harvey Milk from one among its ships.
Per a report from Army.com, the order was handed down in a memo from Navy Secretary John Phelan. The memo mentioned that the redesignation of the oil tanker USNS Harvey Milk was an try and get into “alignment with president and SECDEF aims and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior tradition.”
A protection official who spoke to the outlet mentioned that the directive got here from Hegseth, including that the Pentagon had deliberately timed the announcement to coincide with the beginning of Delight Month. The renaming is anticipated to change into official subsequent week.
Milk was the primary overtly homosexual man to carry elected workplace in the US after profitable a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He was assassinated lower than one 12 months after assuming workplace. Milk was additionally a commissioned naval officer who served within the Korean Warfare, and got here from a household with a historical past of service within the department.
Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district incorporates a lot of San Francisco, referred to as the choice “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those that fought to interrupt down obstacles for all to chase the American Dream.”
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“Our navy is essentially the most highly effective on the planet – however this spiteful transfer doesn’t strengthen our nationwide safety or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” she shared in a press release. “As an alternative, it’s a give up of a basic American worth: to honor the legacy of those that labored to construct a greater nation.”
Hegseth has made the conflict towards “wokeness” and the restoration of what he calls a “warrior ethos” central to his scandal-ridden tenure. This determination was reportedly framed as a part of that effort. On Tuesday, CBS Information reported that the Navy was trying into altering the names of different ships named after outstanding civil rights leaders and icons, together with Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriett Tubman, Cesar Chavez and Medgar Evers.