WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War.
U.S. officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler and that a new name is expected this month. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the next name had not yet been chosen.
The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth's objectives to “re-establish the warrior culture.”
It marks the latest move by Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon’s campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that 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.”
Phelan’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the decision, which was first reported by Military.com.
The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.
Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office.
Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. It passed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into law.
On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk’s bill.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat representing San Francisco, said in a statement Tuesday that "this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom also slammed the move, saying Milk was a Korean War combat veteran whose commander called him “outstanding.”
“Stripping his name from a Navy ship won’t erase his legacy as an American icon, but it does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans fight to protect,” the Democrat wrote on X.
The ship was christened in 2021, and during the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted to be at the event “not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future.”
The ship is operated by Military Sealift Command, with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners. The Navy says it conducted its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024, while operating in the Virginia Capes. It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast until it began scheduled maintenance at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year.
While the renaming is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from U.S. military installations.
The USS Chancellorsville — named for the Civil War battle — was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved person. And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship originally named after a Confederate sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor.
Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listens during an event with President Donald Trump to sign executive orders regarding nuclear energy in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his main political opponent, Péter Magyar, each called their supporters to the streets of Hungary's capital on Sunday for a show of strength before the two men face off in pivotal elections just four weeks away.
The rival rallies in Budapest, expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people in support of Orbán's nationalist Fidesz party and Magyar's center-right Tisza, are being viewed as a barometer for which side commands more support as the campaign enters its final month.
In power since 2010 and looking for his fifth consecutive election victory, Orbán, 62, faces a more competitive race than at any time in the past two decades as Magyar has shot to prominence and challenged what once seemed to be an unshakeable grip on power by the pro-Russian populist.
As crowds gathered on a bridge over the Danube ahead of the pro-government march that would end with a speech by the prime minister, Orbán supporter Anikó Menyhárt said his appeal could be summed up in three words: “God, homeland, family.”
“Only this government is able to secure these three things for the future,” she said.
In the days ahead of Sunday's events, held on the March 15 national holiday commemorating Hungary's 1848 revolution against the Habsburg Empire, both Orbán and Magyar stressed to their followers the importance of attending. Many observers were watching for which party was able to mobilize more people to its rally, a possible glimpse into how they might perform on April 12.
Magyar's supporters planned their own march through central Budapest later in the day. Tisza has predicted it will be Hungary's “biggest ever political event.”
Hungary's stagnating economy, deteriorating public services and a cost of living crisis — compounded by increasingly salient allegations of government corruption — have helped fuel growing dissatisfaction with Orbán and his autocratic style.
While the long-serving leader has centered his campaign around what he says are the dangers to Hungary posed by the European Union and neighboring Ukraine, Magyar, a 44-year-old lawyer and one-time Fidesz insider who broke with the party in 2024, has focused his message on improving conditions for ordinary Hungarians.
Through relentless campaigning across Hungary's rural countryside, traditionally an Orbán stronghold, Magyar has spread the message that he will restore Hungary's democratic institutions that have eroded under Orbán, and steer the country back toward its Western partners and off its drift toward Moscow.
In a video posted to social media early Sunday, Magyar said his party "would like to give back to every Hungarian what the outgoing government has taken away: our belief in our freedom, and the feeling that our homeland truly belongs to every Hungarian.”
Tisza holds a lead over Fidesz in most independent polling, and in a February survey by pollster Medián published by the news site HVG, Magyar's party was at a 20 percentage point advantage among decided voters.
But the outcome of the election remains far from certain as Fidesz has sought to engage its broad support in many rural areas and leverage its control over public broadcasters and a vast web of loyal media outlets to deliver its message.
Magyar, responding to numerous media reports that Russian intelligence services were seeking to use a disinformation campaign to tilt the election in Orbán's favor, has warned his supporters that manipulated recordings could be used to discredit him or his movement.
Orbán has relied increasingly on an aggressive anti-Ukraine campaign that alleges Kyiv, the EU and Tisza are part of a conspiracy to oust his government and install one that makes decisions more favorable to Ukraine.
The central message of Orbán’s pitch is that a new government would bankrupt Hungary by supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion — something he has refused to do — and send Hungary’s youth to their deaths on the front lines. The campaign has been replete with disinformation, and relied heavily on pictures and videos generated by artificial intelligence.
Further fueling the tension, Hungary's government this week said it will declassify a national security report that Orbán claims will prove Tisza received illegal financing from Ukraine — a claim Magyar has strongly denied.
A supporter of Prime Minister Viktor Orban holds a placard reading "Stop the War" during a march in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
President of the opposition Tisza Party Peter Magyar speaks during a campaign stop in Velence, Hungary, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (Zoltan Mathe/MTI via AP)
Supporters of Prime Minister Viktor Orban take part in a march in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Supporters of Prime Minister Viktor Orban take part in a march in Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
