Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the renaming of the U.S. Naval Ship Harvey Milk, according to a report in Military.com on Tuesday.

Since 2016, the replenishment oiler has borne the name of the late gay rights icon, who served in the Navy during the Korean War, was separated from the service other than honorably to avoid being court martialed for his homosexuality, and then went on to become the the first LGBTQ candidate elected to public office in California.

Per the article, a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy outlined the plans to rename the ship, and a defense official said the order to take this “rare step” came from Hegseth with an announcement deliberately planned for Pride month, on June 13.

The memo reviewed by Military.com indicates that the move comes as part of an effort to strengthen “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”

Milk was assassinated in 1978 while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D), who has represented the city in Congress since 1987, said the decision is “a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country” and “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

“Our military is the most powerful in the world — but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” she said.

Renaming a Naval ship is traditionally considered taboo, as well as a harbinger of bad luck.

During the Biden-Harris administration in 2023, however, a cruiser and research ship with names tied to the Confederacy were renamed — though Military.com notes that “the recommendation to rename the two ships came from a commission that was created by Congress to study names with ties to the Confederacy across the entire military.”

CBS on Tuesday reported that along with the Harvey Milk, the Navy is also considering renaming other John Lewis-class oilers including the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and USNS Harriet Tubman. 

Lambda Legal and the Legal Defense Fund issued a letter on Tuesday urging U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to reverse course on a policy that led to the removal of 381 books from the Nimitz Library of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Pursuant to President Donald Trump’s executive order 14190, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” the institution screened 900 titles to identify works promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” removing those that concerned or touched upon “topics pertaining to the experiences of people of color, especially Black people, and/or LGBTQ people,” according to a press release from the civil rights organizations.

These included “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, “Stone Fruit” by Lee Lai, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by James W. Loewen, “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, and “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul” by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. 

The groups further noted that “the collection retained other books with messages and themes that privilege certain races and religions over others, including ‘The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan’ by Thomas Dixon, Jr., ‘Mein Kampf’ by Adolf Hitler, and ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad.

In their letter, Lambda Legal and LDF argued the books must be returned to circulation to preserve the “constitutional rights” of cadets at the institution, warning of the “danger” that comes with “censoring materials based on viewpoints disfavored by the current administration.”

“Such censorship is especially dangerous in an educational setting, where critical inquiry, intellectual diversity, and exposure to a wide array of perspectives are necessary to educate future citizen-leaders,” Lambda Legal Chief Legal Officer Jennifer C. Pizer and LDF Director of Strategic Initiatives Jin Hee Lee said in the press release.

The U.S. Air Force has issued a “directive to cease the use of ‘preferred pronouns’ (he/him, she/her, or they/them) to identify one’s gender identity in professional communications,” according to a report published in the Hill on Wednesday.

The rule, which applies to both airmen and civilian employees, was first adopted on Feb. 4 pursuant to President Donald Trump’s anti-transgender executive order called, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

Days after the administration’s issuance of that order on the first day of the president’s second term, the Office of Personnel Management instructed agencies across the whole of the federal government to remove pronouns from email signatures and enforce the policy barring employees from using them.

Additionally, on Jan. 27 Trump published an order barring trans people from joining the U.S. Armed Forces, indicating that those who are currently in serving would be separated from the military. The Pentagon is fending off legal challenges to the ban in federal courts.

Particularly given the extent of the new administration’s efforts to restrict the rights of trans Americans and push them out of public life, the Air Force’s reversal of the pronoun guidance was surprising.

According to reporting in Military.com, the move might have come because officials concluded the rule was in conflict with language in the military appropriations funding legislation passed by Congress in 2023.

The NDAA established that the defense secretary “may not require or prohibit a member of the armed forces or a civilian employee of the Department of Defense to identify the gender or personal pronouns of such member or employee in any official correspondence of the Department.”