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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, the U.S. Navy has developed many traditions over its centuries of existence. Among them is the method of naming its ships. Most, though not all, aircraft carriers are named after U.S. Presidents--the USS Truman, the Eisenhower, the Ford. Nuclear submarines are named after States--the VA class and the Ohio class, for example.

The Navy is now partway through building its newest class of fleet replenishment oilers. These are the ships that resupply fuel to the rest of the Navy fleet and the aircraft operating aboard those ships. These are the John Lewis class.

I am immensely proud to have been a colleague of Congressman John Lewis's in the House of Representatives, where I served alongside him from 2000 until his passing in 2020. I was lucky enough, through our shared service, to consider him a friend. He was just a wonderful, genuine, heroic, brave, courageous, and upbeat individual. I never saw John Lewis have a bad day, never saw him anything other than optimistic about the future of our country.

I have another source of pride. The State of California, home to General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, NASSCO, is where the oilers are being built. The ships in this class are, in addition to the John Lewis, named after California Governor and Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Navy lieutenant Harvey Milk, the San Francisco gay rights pioneer. Four more ships are under construction: the USNS Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Harriet Tubman and Dolores Huerta are under contract. The Navy reports that the next two ships in the class will be named after Joshua Goldberg and Thomas Parham.

The Navy has seen fit to honor these civil rights icons who spent their lives fighting for the rights of the American people by naming ships in their honor. We learned this week, however, that the Secretary of Defense does not share the view that these leaders are worthy of the honor of recognition that the Navy has bestowed upon them.

According to a statement from a spokesman, it is better to name defense installations and assets that are more aligned with ``the warrior ethos''--whatever they mean by that.

The Secretary of Defense, who testified at his confirmation hearing that today constitutes ``the most dangerous moment we have been in since the end of the Cold War, and possibly since World War II''--that Secretary of Defense is spending his time ordering Department officials to remove the name of Harvey Milk from the second oiler in the John Lewis class of ships. Other ships may be similarly renamed.

Harvey Milk joined the Navy as a diver after graduating from college and saw action in the Korean war while serving on a rescue submarine from 1952 until 1954. He was forced to resign with an other than honorable discharge rather than being court-martialed for being gay.

In 1977, he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay official in the country. On November 27, 1978, Milk was tragically shot by a fellow supervisor, Dan White.

As many Senators know, our former colleague Dianne Feinstein, in whose seat I am now deeply honored to serve, was the first to find Harvey Milk's body after he had been shot to death and to whom the job of holding San Francisco together then fell.

Dianne Feinstein was a cosponsor of the USNS Harvey Milk, with her name welded into the hull. One wonders if the Secretary of Defense will try to remove that as well.

I suspect it is no coincidence that the Pentagon released the news of the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk at the beginning of Pride Month and while Washington, DC, hosts World Pride. You can draw a straight line between the Department of Defense in this administration removing Jackie Robinson from its official site and its terminating the first woman to lead the military services and a well-respected African- American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all without cause.

I don't understand how these removals promote the ``warrior ethos.'' I don't understand how it promotes the ``warrior ethos'' to rename the military installation Fort Bragg, using the fig leaf that it is now named for a different person of that name than the Confederate general for whom it is really connected. Engaging in such duplicitous word games seems more weak than warrior.

The U.S. Senate should not stand by silently while U.S. civil rights icons--from John Lewis to Cesar Chaves, to Dolores Huerta, to Harriet Tubman--are erased from the Navy just as the Pentagon has erased so many other figures from American history on its websites.

And so, today, I offer a simple resolution with my California colleague Alex Padilla. It says that the Senate believes it is important and worthwhile to honor civil rights leaders by naming ships after them and expresses the Senate's view that the Department of Defense should not seek to remove these names.

Res. 264, submitted earlier today; that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague.

Past Presidents and Secretaries of the Navy have named these ships. They have named them after civil rights leaders: John Lewis, Thurgood Marshall.

Joshua Goldberg, who lived from 1896 to 1994, was drafted into the Russian Army in World War I, emigrated to the United States, and became the first Jewish rabbi to volunteer for naval service in World War II, rising to the rank of captain.

Thomas Parham, who lived from 1920 to 2007, was ordained in 1944 and served in shore assignments during World War II and then returned to Active Duty as a chaplain during the Korean war, serving in Japan, and becoming the Navy's first African-American sailor promoted to captain.

These are inspiring people. Honoring them by naming ships after them tells young people that the United States welcomes them--all of them.

Naming ships may fall to the executive branch, but I think Congress, with its constitutional duty to raise armies and navies, has an important role to play.

All this resolution does is express approval of the existing names. It does not force the Navy to keep them. But it says that the individuals that have been named are worthy of that honor and distinction, and I would urge my colleagues to support the resolution.

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