Latest news with #Hegseth
San Francisco Chronicle
5 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Harvey Milk name erased from Navy ship during Pride Month
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. Navy has renamed a ship honoring slain gay rights icon Harvey Milk, replacing it with the name of a World War II hero. The decision, which critics called politically motivated and timed to Pride Month, marks a stark reversal in the Navy's recent approach to commemorating civil rights leaders. The fleet oiler, formerly known as the USNS Harvey Milk, will now bear the name of Oscar V. Peterson, a Medal of Honor recipient who died saving his ship, the USS Neosho, during a 1942 Japanese attack. 'We are taking the politics out of ship naming,' Hegseth said in a video posted to X. 'People want to be proud of the ship they're sailing in.' I am pleased to announce that the United States Navy is renaming the USNS Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson. We are taking the politics out of ship naming. — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) June 27, 2025 The ship was christened in 2021 under a policy from the Obama-era Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to name oilers after civil and human rights champions. Milk, a Navy veteran who was forced to accept an 'other than honorable' discharge due to his sexuality, later became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. before his assassination in 1978. An internal Navy memo revealed that the renaming aligns with President Donald Trump's and Hegseth's goals to 're-establish the warrior culture.' The timing — days after WorldPride celebrations in Washington, D.C. — has drawn intense backlash. 'The removal of Harvey Milk's name from a naval vessel — during Pride Month, no less — is absolutely shameful,' state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said in a statement when the news of the name change first emerged this month. 'Brave LGBTQ veterans worked for years to achieve the naming of a ship for Harvey. Now Trump and Hegseth are wiping it away due to straight-up bigotry.' The USNS Harvey Milk is one of 17 vessels built to honor civil rights heroes, including civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; women's rights activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. 'Donald Trump's assault on veterans has hit a new low.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on social media this month. 'Harvey Milk wasn't just a civil rights icon — he 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.'
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nicolle Wallace blasts Hegseth over performative news conference on Iran strikes
Nicolle Wallace called out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his performative news conference on Thursday, which she argued did little to resolve the issue 'haunting' the Trump administration in the wake of the United States' airstrikes on Iran. That issue, according to Wallace, revolves around one key question: 'Has Iran's nuclear program been — as Donald Trump asserted Saturday night and has repeated every day since — 'obliterated'?' During his remarks Thursday, Hegseth repeated Trump's claim that the facilities had been 'obliterated.' However, as Wallace noted, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, refused to use that word when describing the results of the strike. Wallace said Caine's choice encapsulated 'the whole issue that's being debated.' 'Were the strikes successful in terms of hitting targets? Yes. But did the strikes deliver the result that the administration says they did, and says they wanted?' Wallace asked. Wallace also tore into Hegseth over his treatment of the media during the news conference. 'Here's what happened when Fox News' Pentagon reporter, Hegseth's former colleague, Jennifer Griffin, asked the incredibly important and respectful and relevant question whether the Iranians moved uranium out of the Fordo site,' Wallace said, before playing a clip of Griffin and Hegseth's exchange, during which the defense secretary personally attacked his former colleague and accused her of being 'about the worst' at intentionally misrepresenting what Trump says. Wallace also praised Griffin for standing up for herself and her reporting: That was America's secretary of defense saying to Fox's highly respected, highly credible, highly experienced Pentagon correspondent, 'Jennifer, you're the worst.' And you saw her there take issue with the assessment and go on to defend her reporting, none of which has been disproven. It's just a taste of what happened today at the Pentagon from the secretary of defense, whose salary is paid for by all of our taxpayer dollars. Watch Wallace's full comments on Hegseth's news conference in the clip at the top. This article was originally published on
Int'l Business Times
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
Veterans Advocate Mocks Hegseth's 'Rattled' Iran Briefing: 'I Wish He Attacked Putin as Aggressively as He Attacks CNN'
A staunch advocate for veterans mocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's Iran briefing, saying the Trump administration official appeared "rattled" and "volatile" while updating reporters on the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran and founder of the veteran advocacy nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America , berated Hegseth during a discussion on CNN Thursday night. "To use a military term, it's conduct unbecoming. He looks rattled, he obviously looks thin-skinned, he's extremely aggressive and volatile, and he's attacking the press. We need him to attack our enemies," Reickhoff said. "I wish he attacked Vladimir Putin as aggressively as he attacks CNN and others," he continued. Rieckhoff's comments come after CNN published a report claiming that the Pentagon's own initial report suggested that the Iran strikes had only damaged the sites, not completely destroying them like the president has suggested. The White House railed against the report, calling it "flat-out wrong." During the briefing, Hegseth lashed out at Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin, a former colleague of his, during the Thursday Iran briefing after she questioned if the Trump administration was certain that Iran's highly enriched uranium had been hit in the strikes. "Jennifer, you've been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally," Hegseth said. "I think what he's doing is continuing to conflate the war with the warriors. It's something we worked hard as a nation across partisan lines to separate after Vietnam, to separate the politics from the people, and they have melded the two together," Rieckhoff explained. "Because the press is asking hard questions of our president, doesn't mean anything about the troops. It's entirely separate, and they're using it consistently as a very dangerous shield which continues to politicize our military, which is their playbook now, which is very, very dangerous," he continued. Attacks on the press have been consistent across various aspects of President Donald Trump's administration. Trump himself has berated specific journalists for their reporting and has branded certain outlets as "fake news." Originally published on Latin Times
Politico
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Politico
‘Obliteration' or not, House Republicans argue Iran strikes were a diplomatic win
House Republicans have a new message about U.S. airstrikes on Iran: It matters less about how much damage was done, and more that it succeeded in bringing a badly weakened Tehran back to the negotiating table. Several GOP lawmakers hammered that message Friday morning as they left a classified briefing by some of President Donald Trump's top military and intelligence officials on last weekend's surprise U.S. airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities. It marked a small but notable pivot for supporters of Trump's policy agenda who have struggled in recent days to back up his repeated claims that Iran's nuclear program has been 'obliterated.' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in the briefing that the objective of the strikes was to bring Iran to the negotiating table, according to two attendees. Iran and Israel reached a ceasefire Monday and Trump said Wednesday that new talks with Iran are planned for next week. While many GOP senators who received a similar briefing Thursday were left dancing around Trump's maximalist portrayal of the strikes' long-term impact, House leadership on Friday made a concerted effort to frame the success of the mission as hinging on more than just damage assessments. 'I think the greatest evidence that we have of the effectiveness of this mission was that Iran came immediately and was willing to engage in a ceasefire agreement that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks back,' Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the briefing. Johnson, like other Republicans, also insisted the strike resulted in a 'substantial setback' for Iran's nuclear program. The readout for lawmakers came days after the leak of a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggesting U.S. airstrikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months. That set off a scramble by Trump, Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth and other senior Cabinet officials to push out new intelligence combating the DIA report, which the Pentagon intelligence agency said was a preliminary and low-confidence assessment. Hegseth has said the FBI and Pentagon are probing the leak. Several Republicans exiting the briefing — and at least one of the briefers inside the closed-door meeting — suggested that the exact description of the damage was immaterial. Iran had received a harsh message that any attempt to build a nuclear weapon would be met with force.'Regardless of whether you believe the leaked assessment — which was a 'low-confidence' assessment — the U.S. was able to go in there without any resistance and strike whatever it wanted to,' said House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) 'So even if you believe that worst case scenario and we need to go back in there, we can.' Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.), a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, added that the strikes instilled in Iran that there was a 'price to pay for continuing to enrich [uranium] beyond the 60 percent threshold.' But some Democrats emerged from the briefing with lingering questions about how effective the attack was at halting Iran's nuclear ambitions — and preventing a future conflict from reigniting. 'I'm walking out of this thinking we still don't know,' said Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. 'The contradictions within the intelligence have still not been resolved.' 'We've got a cornucopia of adjectives ranging from 'obliterated' to 'destroyed' to 'set back',' said top Intelligence Committee Democrat Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). 'The question is, did we significantly set back that program? And we still don't have a good answer to that question.' Himes also cast doubt on the idea that the strikes had paved the way for a diplomatic breakthrough acceptable to Israel, given that they had been 'browbeaten' by the U.S. into the ceasefire. 'If you're the Israelis and you suspect that we didn't get it all, or that there's not going to be a negotiation, you've got a tough conversation with the president of the United States,' Himes said. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) suggested that Trump's declaration of the strikes' success early on may have been bravado — because Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine said at a news briefing just after the strikes that the full damage assessment would take time. 'You don't have to read classified material to know he overstated,' Quigley said. 'It's dangerous to overstate, because you need to know what the risks are, because you've got to face the risk — the risk that exists, not what you want the risk to be.' The two classified sessions featured the same cadre of briefers: Hegseth, Rubio, Caine and CIA director John Ratcliffe. For the second time in two days, that meant Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was noticeably missing from the conversation. Gabbard has been sidelined amid Israel's conflict with Iran and has reportedly clashed with Trump. Asked about the absence of the notional top spy in the U.S. intelligence community, Himes described it as 'very peculiar.' Still, some Republicans downplayed the significance. 'I'm not sure that's really meaningful. I think we got the information that we needed to get from the people most directly involved,' said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), an Intelligence Committee member. Both Thursday and Friday's sessions also came after days of complaints from lawmakers that they weren't kept in the loop about the weekend's surprise attack on Iranian nuclear sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz. The mission involved seven B-2 stealth aircraft and a guided missile submarine, and marked the first combat use ever of the 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker busting bomb, with 14 dropped on the Fordo facility and other sites. But many Democrats argue the strikes, which Congress didn't vote to authorize, amounted to an unconstitutional overreach by Trump. House and Senate Democrats are now pushing war powers legislation that would prohibit Trump from taking further military action against Iran without congressional approval. The Senate plans to vote Friday evening on Sen. Tim Kaine's (D-Va.) resolution to rein in Trump's war powers on Iran, but that measure is almost certain to fail unless Republicans break ranks with the administration. Libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed his own war powers resolution and criticized Trump's decision to strike Iran as unconstitutional — which made him a target for Trump — but stood down from forcing a vote after Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. Progressives and top national security Democrats, though, are still pushing for a vote in the coming weeks.
San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
USNS Harvey Milk is renamed after a WWII sailor in the latest Pentagon diversity purge
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the USNS Harvey Milk will be renamed after a World War II sailor who received the Medal of Honor, stripping the ship of the name of a slain gay rights activist who served during the Korean War. In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said he was 'taking the politics out of ship naming.' The ship's new name will honor Navy Chief Petty Officer Oscar V. Peterson, who was awarded the highest military decoration posthumously for his actions during the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea in the Pacific. The decision is the latest move by Hegseth to wipe away names of ships and military bases that were given by President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, which in many cases chose to honor service members who were women, minorities, from the LBGTQ community and more. It follows earlier actions by Hegseth and President Donald Trump, a Republican, to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion in the military and elsewhere. Hegseth's announcement comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon's campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military. 'We're not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists,' said Hegseth, who earlier this month ordered Navy Secretary John Phelan to put together a small team to rename the USNS Harvey Milk replenishment oiler. He said Peterson's 'spirit of self-sacrifice and concern for his crewmates was in keeping with the finest traditions of the Navy.' When Hegseth announced the decision to rename the ship, officials defended it as an effort to align with Trump and Hegseth's objectives to 're-establish the warrior culture.' Peterson served on the USS Neosho, which also was an oiler. The ship was damaged during the Battle of the Coral Sea, and even though Peterson was injured, he managed to close the bulkhead stop valves to keep the ship operational. He died of his wounds. The Navy in 1943 named an escort ship after Peterson. The USS Peterson served for more than two decades and was decommissioned in June 1965. 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. Harvey 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, in San Francisco. He was assassinated in 1978 by a disgruntled former city supervisor.
