Sean Penn won the Best Actor Academy Award for 2008’s film Milk, even beating out Brad Pitt.
Context
In 2016, President Obama’s Navy Secretary Ray Mabus named a ship after Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco politician assassinated in 1978. Milk served in the Navy himself, in the 1950s, but resigned after questions arose about his sexual orientation.
(Openly gay people couldn’t serve in the U.S. military until Congress enacted the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010.)
In June 2025, President Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Navy Secretary John Phelan to rename the ship.
A few weeks later, Hegseth unveiled the new namesake: Oscar V. Peterson, a Navy chief petty officer posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor after he was killed in action during World War II. Peterson was married to a woman.
CBS News reported that the Navy is also considering potentially renaming Obama-era and Biden-era ships named after liberal icons, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Dolores Huerta, Lucy Stone, Cesar Chavez, and Medgar Evers.
What the bill does
Current U.S. law allows the Navy secretary to rename any Navy ship. But the Preserving Great Americans’ Legacies Act would ban renaming any ship named after those eight people: Milk, Ginsburg, Tubman, Marshall, Huerta, Stone, Chavez, and Evers.
The House bill was introduced on June 12 by Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA50).
Although there doesn’t appear to be a Senate bill on the subject, which would actually change public policy, Senate Democrats introduced a symbolic resolution “supporting” the current ship names. That was introduced on June 5 by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
What supporters say
Supporters argue the Milk-to-Peterson alteration is yet another example of the Trump administration whitewashing history to highlight certain preferred demographics.
“While Hegseth works to erase the names of these important civic leaders from the fleet, the president also publicly commits to renaming military bases for Confederate leaders,” Rep. Peters said in a press release. “That is a clear values statement by the administration about the America it envisions and asks our servicemembers and their families to serve. It is unacceptable and unreflective of our country.”
“Every sailor deserves to serve on and fight from a ship named after an American who embodies those values we wish to see in our military,” Rep. Peters continued. “That is why the Navy named these ships after such important leaders.”
What opponents say
Opponents counter that the ship would be better named after someone primarily recognized and awarded for their actual military heroism, rather than for their left-wing governance.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming. We are not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration,” Hegseth said in a video announcing the change.
“People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in,” Hegseth continued. “[Peterson’s] spirit of self-sacrifice and concern for his crewmates was in keeping with the finest traditions of the Navy.”
Odds of passage
The House bill has attracted 17 Democratic cosponsors. It awaits a potential vote in the House Armed Services Committee, unlikely under Republican control.
In the Senate, Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) blocked that chamber’s symbolic resolution from coming up for a floor vote.
“It’s no secret that the last administration took a top-down approach to the naming of our newest class of [ships],” Sen. Budd said in a Senate floor speech. “In doing so, they broke with important naval customs and traditions, and they robbed the plank owners [a ship’s original crew members] of the chance to name these vessels after what mattered most to them.”
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his report, Congress Bill Spotlight, on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
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