U.S. Navy documents obtained by CBS News and used to brief the secretary of the Navy and his chief of staff show proposed timelines for rolling out the name change of the USNS Harvey Milk to the public. While the documents do not say what the ship's new name would be, the proposal comes during Pride Month, the monthlong observance of the LGBTQ+ community that also coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising of 1969. WorldPride celebrations are being held in Washington, D.C., this year.
The documents obtained by CBS News also show other vessels named after prominent leaders are also on the Navy's renaming “recommended list.”
Among them are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez and USNS Medgar Evers.
CBS News found that a December 2024 web article from Naval Sea Systems Command about the laying of the keel for the future USNS Thurgood Marshall has been deleted.
Ben Shapiro: “It was always ridiculous to to suggest that we're going to name our Navy ships after sort of DEI heroes in American life”
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From the June 4, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): We have now entered the month of June. And as we all know, June is the greatest month on the American calendar because it is a month of miracles and happiness and joy, specifically queer joy. Because June, of course, is Pride Month, the month when we are all supposed to pretend that the most important thing about any human being is their sexual orientation and that all of America must celebrate this together. That is what Pride Month is all about. Well, I have some Pride Month stories. It's not going the way that many people on the left were hoping Pride Month was going to go.
So, for example, the US military has now decided that they are going to rename a ship. There is a navy ship that is called USS Harvey Milk. That was always an absurdity, an absurdity of absurdities. Harvey Milk was not a member of the military. Harvey Milk had no impact on military policy. Harvey Milk was a San Francisco Board of Supervisors member in the 1970s who was shot to death after 11 months on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and became a sort of martyr for the so-called gay rights cause. He also happened to be a guy who was schtuping a 16-year-old boy. So, you know, he was in in common parlance committing a crime. So Harvey Milk had legitimately nothing to do with the military. He served in the navy during the Korean War. That's literally his only connection to the military. That was also true of millions of other people who served in World War II or the Korean War or the Vietnam War. The US Navy ship Harvey Milk was originally named in 2016 by Ray Mabus under Barack Obama. The idea that we were naming a navy ship after a man who was only famous for being a San Francisco gay rights activist who was killed in 1978 by a fellow member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who was mad that he had been fired and that he wasn't getting his full salary. That's ridiculous. Like, if you're going to name navy ships, typically, you are going to name them after naval heroes. You're typically going to name them after people who had an impact on military policy. You're gonna name them after places. Name -- the USS -- the US Navy ship RuPaul should not be a thing. And it was always ridiculous to to suggest that we're going to name our Navy ships after sort of DEI heroes in American life. And yet that is what Barack Obama was all about. It was deliberately silly by the Obama administration, and now that's being walked back by the Trump administration during Pride month of all times.
According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is planning to strip the name from a navy ship that honors the gay rights icon Harvey Milk, who by the way was also schtuping a 16-year-old, which is against the law, and could expand the purge to include other vessels recognizing prominent civil rights figures, defense officials said Tuesday. Deliberations, officials said, are ongoing after a recent order by Hegseth to Navy secretary John Phelan, with the decision to be announced as soon as mid-June to coincide with Pride Month, which President Trump has rejected celebrating because, of course, typically, pride is considered a sin. You should not celebrate sin. I know that this this word sin has gone out of common usage. I get it. But it is kind of weird that what you are actually celebrating during Pride Month is the sin of pride. In any case, it was unclear when or even if any other navy vessels honoring civil rights figures could see their titles changed. Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for Hegseth, released a statement acknowledging a review is underway that could result in the renaming of Defense Department installations and resources. In other words, we are no longer going to be painting our bombs with trans pride flags, which to me is a good thing. So in honor of Pride Month, no more US Navy ship Harvey Milk. It is amazing this ever happened in our country, truly. You name a Navy ship after a guy who is mostly famous for just being a gay rights activist in San Francisco. Truly unbelievable.