Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls, formerly named USS Chancellorsville, approaches the USS Ronald Reagan before a fueling-at-sea in the Pacific Ocean on July 1, 2025. The ship was renamed the Robert Smalls in March 2023. (Eric Stanton/U.S. Navy)
President Donald Trump scrambled Navy ship-naming traditions last week with his announcement of a new “Trump-class” battleship, to be called the USS Defiant, featuring nuclear-tipped missiles and laser defenses.
Battleships are usually named after states — the last commissioned was the USS Missouri in 1944. Ship classes are named after the first ship of the type built — the Missouri was a USS Iowa-class, named for the first of four battleships ordered in 1939.
Trump’s announcement put an exclamation point on the end of a busy year for Navy ship naming.
The period between a presidential election and inauguration is often filled with last-minute ship naming.
In January 2021, Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite traveled to Massachusetts to film a video in front of the Navy’s oldest ship, the USS Constitution, nicknamed “Old Ironsides,” commissioned in October 1797.
“We must always look to our wake to chart our future course,” he said before announcing names for a new frigate, an expeditionary ship, an attack submarine and an amphibious transport dock.
In November 2024, voters returned Trump to the White House, and in January it was the turn of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration to go on a ship-naming spree.
Biden’s Navy Secretary, Carlos Del Toro, rolled out 19 new ship names — including new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers to be named for former President William J. Clinton (a Democrat) and President George W. Bush ( a Republican).
“When I personally delivered the news to Bill and George, they were deeply humbled,” Biden said at the time. “Each knows firsthand the weight of the responsibilities that come with being Commander-in-Chief.”
In 2025, the naming — and renaming — of ships didn’t hit much of a speed bump with a change in the occupant of the White House.
In June, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the name of the USNS Harvey Milk stripped from the official Naval Vessel Register. Milk was a national gay rights leader and San Francisco supervisor assassinated in 1978. The Navy said Hegseth had ordered Navy Secretary John Phelan to make the change, “taking the politics out of ship naming.”
The ship was renamed for Navy Chief Petty Officer Oscar V. Peterson, a Medal of Honor recipient from the World War II Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the new class of replenishment oilers was directed by Congress to be named for prominent civil rights advocates. The class carries the name of the late black civil rights advocate and longtime U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia.
Two other oilers operate with the fleet: The USNS Robert F. Kennedy, named for the senator assassinated in 1968 while running for president and the USNS Earl Warren, named for the former California governor known for progressive decisions while serving as chief justice of the United States.
Two ships named for women’s rights advocates — Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth — have been launched. Three more under construction have been named for liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as Civil War-era anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman.
Phelan, Hegseth and Trump have not ordered any further name changes to the Lewis-class ships.
Congress created a commission in 2021 to remove names of military installations that “honor or commemorate the Confederacy.” The U.S. Army’s Fort Hood and Fort Bragg were among those changed under the Biden administration. Under Trump, the bases’ names were restored this year but officially are named for soldiers or others who bear the same last name as the Confederate namesakes.
The same law called for the removal of the names of two Navy ships linked to the Confederacy. The USS Chancellorsville was a Ticonderoga-class cruiser commissioned in 1989, named after a particularly bloody 1863 Civil War battle that historians generally believe was won by rebel forces. The cruiser was renamed the USS Robert Smalls, for a runaway slave who stole a Confederate ship, gun, ammunition and code books to make his getaway to a Union blockade ship outside Charleston Harbor. Smalls later served in Congress as a Republican during Reconstruction.
The Navy also changed the name of the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a famed oceanographer who joined the Confederacy. The vessel was renamed USNS Marie Tharp, after the researcher best known for helping produce the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor.
Hegseth and Phelan have not moved to reverse the names of the ships. The USS Robert Smalls is one of three Ticonderoga-class cruisers scheduled for decommissioning in 2026. There are no plans to decommission the USNS Marie Tharp.
Before the new battleship announcement, Trump scrambled Navy ship naming plans with an announcement canceling the Constellation frigate program after the two ships were already under construction — the USS Constellation and the USS Congress.
The Navy canceled the remaining ships, including those to be named for the French Marquis de Lafayette, who aided American patriot forces in the Revolutionary War; Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton; Spain’s Louisiana Governor Conde Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, a backer of the American Revolution; former Navy pilot Everett Alvarez Jr., who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War; and Capt. Bright Joy Hancock, one of the first female Navy officers, who served during World War I and II.
Also canceled was the new USS Chesapeake, named after the early American frigate captured by Britain in 1813, renamed HMS Chesapeake and later deconstructed for use as a watermill in Wickham, Hampshire, England. In recent years, the building has housed an antiques store.
In canceling the Constellation program, Trump announced a new generation of frigates called FF(X) based on the U.S. Coast Guard’s large National Security Cutter design. The names of the future ships are to be determined.
A sidelight to the “Trump-class” battleship-naming controversy is that it could affect naming a future aircraft carrier after the president.
Twelve of the past 17 aircraft carriers have been named for presidents, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. From Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, nearly every president has had an aircraft carrier named for them.
The exceptions are Lyndon B. Johnson, whose name is on a Zumwalt-class destroyer to be commissioned in 2027, and President Jimmy Carter, a former Navy submarine officer, who has a Seawolf-class attack submarine named for him.
Only President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal, doesn’t have a ship at sea or in the construction pipeline bearing his name.
Four of six Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers are named for presidents. If the naming tradition is followed in chronological order, future carriers could be named for Presidents Barack Obama, Trump and Biden.
