Pete Hegseth isn’t stopping with Harvey Milk. The Defense secretary, it seems, is poised to strip other civil rights icons’ names from naval ships as part of his effort to “reestablish” a so-called “warrior culture” in the military.
According to CBS News, the Navy is considering renaming vessels honoring trailblazing Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the civil rights activist Medgar Evers; labor rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta; the abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone and Harriet Tubman, who freed dozens from slavery as a conductor of the Underground Railroad. The considered renamings come after Hegseth ordered the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk—a former Navy lieutenant who was assassinated in 1978 while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors—removed from an oiler.
No new name has been announced for the USNS Harvey Milk or others in the class of oilers named for John Lewis, the late Congressman and civil rights icon. But a Defense Department official told Military.com that the order to remove Milk’s name from the ship was intended to coincide with Pride Month. It’s an odious move—an act of petty, culture-war trolling masquerading as toughness and common sense. “This spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CBS News. “Instead, is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
But Hegseth seems to consider the vessel names displays of the “wokeness and weakness” he says has pervaded the United States military: The Defense secretary 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,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday.
Of course, names themselves appear to be a priority for Donald Trump—and they tap into a vision of American history filtered through the president’s narrow, warped lens.
Upon returning to power in January, Trump ordered the “restoring” of “names that honor American greatness,” which included changing Denali back to Mount McKinley, in honor of the president who never set foot in Alaska, but who—in his telling—“made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” The directive wasn’t just about restoring the past; it was also one of the most cartoonish exercises in pseudo-patriotic rebranding since “freedom fries.” Gulf of Mexico? Not on Trump’s watch. He denominated it the “Gulf of America”: “We do most of the work there,” he reasoned, “and it’s ours.”
If his designations reflect a rather imperial conception of “American greatness,” they also speak to the particular perspective he and his allies have on US history—one where it is apparently “woke” to honor those who fought for equality, but just to honor Confederates who warred against America. “That’s right: [Fort] Bragg is back,” Hegseth said in March after reverting Fort Liberty back to its former name, which honored the Confederate General Braxton Bragg.
Though Hegseth has framed such moves as correctives to performances of wokeness in the military, the real performance is in his constant talk of “warrior ethos” and “warfighters,” which are as over-the-top in his effort to project strength as his flag socks and flag pocket square are in his effort to demonstrate patriotism.
Speaking of flags: Trump—who has also floated rechristening Veterans Day as “Victory Day”—is set to host a military parade on Flag Day to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary…and also, perhaps, his birthday, which also falls on June 14. He has downplayed it as a coincidence: “It’s a very important day,” Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker last month. “It’s Flag Day.”
But Monica Crowley, the former Fox News pundit planning the expensive spectacle, regards the overlap as “providential,” and has made clear the parade will honor Trump as well as the military: “I’m sure the crowd will break out into a ‘Happy Birthday,’” she said on Steve Bannon’s podcast Tuesday. “We all want to make sure that we celebrate in a manner that is fitting, not just of this extraordinary president, but of our extraordinary country.”
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