In what was supposed to be a chain of naval ships being renamed in order to take “the politics out of ship naming,” as per Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the project seems to be screeching to a halt after replacing the name only of the USNS Harvey Milk.

The move came at the beginning of Pride Month, almost in a way of fighting back against the celebration and fanfare within the LGBTQ+ community that would occur throughout June. The administration’s position under Hegseth has been that no ships should be named after civil rights leaders because that’s “ideologically motivated” and that the renaming was not about Milk in particular.

While Milk’s name being removed would be the first, others had been highlighted as well for removal, including many prominent civil rights leaders like abolitionist Sojourner Truth, racial justice champion John Lewis, and Latina labor activist Dolores Huerta.

However, at the start of July, Defense officials told Task & Purpose, a news publication covering the U.S. military, that there were no further plans to rename the other ships originally mentioned, including the ones named after civil rights leaders.

“There are currently no plans to rename other ships in [the John Lewis replenishment oiler] class,” a defense official told Task & Purpose. For clarification, the boat class that Harvey Milk’s name had been a part of specifically gained their names from civilians with ties to the civil rights era.

Milk’s ties to the military come from him serving as a diving officer on a submarine rescue ship during the Korean War. Even after being forced out of the military with a less-than-honorable discharge after being outed as gay, Milk continued to be an advocate and activist for the LGBTQ+ community well after his time in service.

“Like so many LGBTQ+ service members of his generation, [Milk] faced discrimination from the very institutions he served with loyalty and courage,” the group VoteVets said in a statement last month. “To erase his name now, during Pride Month, is no innocent bureaucratic decision. It’s part of Hegseth’s broader campaign to purge the military of anyone who doesn’t fit his narrow, outdated vision.”

Hegseth announced in June that the ship would be renamed for Oscar V. Peterson, who was a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of the Coral Sea during World War II.

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