Cory Booker says renaming USS Doris Miller after Trump would ‘vandalize’ Navy history

The senator introduced three bills as the Trump administration considers renaming an aircraft carrier currently honoring the Pearl Harbor hero.

Sen. Cory Booker is looking to block the Trump Administration from a plan to strip the name of a Black World War II hero from one of its upcoming aircraft carriers and instead name it after President Donald Trump.

The ship, which is still under construction, is set to be named after Doris “Dorie” Miller, a Black sailor who manned an antiaircraft gun during the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and gunned down a Japanese fighter plane, before dragging wounded U.S. soldiers to safety. The vessel, which currently bears the name USS Doris Miller, would be the first to be named after a Black service member.

“Doris Miller didn’t wait for permission to be a hero,” Booker, who introduced the bills on Sept. 30, said in a statement. “He ran toward the fire at Pearl Harbor and fought for a country that wouldn’t even let him train on the gun he used to defend it.”

He added, “This administration wants to erase him and slap the president’s name on a 100,000-ton warship. That isn’t honoring the Navy. It’s vandalizing its history. No president should ever christen or rename a warship in his own honor, and no American hero should be erased to make room for one.”

The decision to name the ship after Miller was announced in January 2020, during the first Trump Administration, at a Martin Luther King Day event.

“He epitomized everything that we want to feel is honorable and virtuous about being American,” Steve Deal, a former deputy to former Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, told NPR last month. “There was no doubt at all that he was the person to name that aircraft carrier for at the time.”

The Navy Secretary has the power to name aircraft carriers, but defense secretaries are also heavily involved in the process. That would leave the final decision on the USS Doris Miller to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao. Hegseth has come under fire during his tenure for the delay in promotion of numerous Black officers or the outright removal of Black officers from possible promotions within the military.

As TheGrio previously reported in August, multiple sources confirmed to CNN that the Navy was working on renaming the Ford-class carrier after the World War II hero, with Trump being floated as a possible namesake. Numerous groups, including war veterans, lawmakers and Miller’s family, have denounced the suggestion.

The trifecta of Booker’s bills would address the following: blocking the use of federal funds to rename the airship after Trump, prohibiting the naming of U.S. warships after sitting presidents and vice presidents and increasing transparency in the naming process.

If Miller’s name is removed from the USS Doris Miller, it could be placed on a Destroyer. Aircraft carriers are typically named after presidents and Medal of Honor recipients traditionally receive the Destroyer distinction. Miller, who was the first Black recipient of the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second-highest honor, could have his honor elevated to the Medal of Honor.

The White House has not yet approved the consideration for Miller to receive the Medal of Honor.