On Thursday evening, the U.S. Coast Guard again classified swastikas, nooses and similar imagery as prohibited hate symbols, just hours after internal documents and news reports showed the service was preparing to call them “potentially divisive.”
As reported by The Washington Post, a memo dated Nov. 20 was sent to all Coast Guard personnel in which Acting Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday issued what he called a policy and “lawful order” that bans “divisive or hate symbols and flags” across all Coast Guard workplaces, facilities and assets. The order specifically includes a noose, a swastika and symbols adopted by hate-based groups as representing racial or religious intolerance or antisemitism.
“The display of any divisive or hate symbol is prohibited and shall be removed from all Coast Guard workplaces, facilities and assets,” the memo states. It makes clear that service members who violate it can face discipline.
The memo also reiterates that the Confederate flag remains banned in Coast Guard spaces — including barracks, the exterior of housing and vehicles — with limited exceptions for art, historical or educational displays where the flag is only an incidental or minor element.
The late-night reversal came after an almost 24-hour period in which the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security and members of Congress publicly wrestled over how the military service labels symbols of hatred.
A brief experiment with ‘potentially divisive’ language
The controversy grew out of an internal effort to revise the Coast Guard’s policies on harassment and extremism.
Under a February 2023 instruction, the service treated swastikas, nooses, supremacist symbols, Confederate flags and antisemitic imagery as examples of symbols whose “display, presentation, creation or depiction would constitute a potential hate incident.”
On Thursday, however, a new policy document, dated Nov. 13, was reported by The Washington Post. In that version, swastikas nooses and similar imagery were listed as “potentially divisive symbols and flags,” and the specific term “hate incident” was not included.
The new approach also introduced a 45-day deadline for reporting such incidents — a change critics told The Washington Post could be especially difficult for Coast Guard members deployed at sea for months at a time.
Coast Guard and DHS push back — then reverse
Initially, Coast Guard and Homeland Security officials pushed back on the implication that the service was relaxing its stance.
Lunday said in a statement to The Independent that “claims that the U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols are categorically false,” insisting that such symbols “have been and remain prohibited in the Coast Guard per policy” and that any display would be “thoroughly investigated and severely punished.”
Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, went further. In a statement on X on Friday, DHS chief spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin attacked the Post’s initial story as “demonstrably false,” calling criticism of the policy “baseless smears and revolting lies” and lamenting that the Coast Guard had to “take time away from its mission” to respond.
But Coast Guard public affairs officials simultaneously acknowledged that leadership was reviewing the new language, according to The Washington Post.
By Thursday night, after a day of mounting criticism, Lunday signed a new memorandum that again labels swastikas and nooses as prohibited hate symbols.
Lawmakers and faith leaders warn of “wrong message”
The proposed shift to “potentially divisive” terminology on Thursday triggered swift responses on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who serves on the Senate Commerce Committee overseeing the Coast Guard, called on the Trump administration to reverse the change before it took effect.
“At a time when antisemitism is rising in the United States and around the world, relaxing policies aimed at fighting hate crimes not only sends the wrong message to the men and women of our Coast Guard, but it puts their safety at risk,” Rosen said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Jewish advocacy leaders also weighed in.
In a letter to Lunday shared with the Deseret News, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, urged the Coast Guard to abandon the “potentially divisive” language.
“There is no context aside from the educational or historical in which a swastika is not a hate symbol,” Rabbi Pesner wrote, calling it “the emblem under which the Nazis perpetrated the genocide of 6 million Jews and 5 million other people” and a symbol long used by white supremacists.
Rabbi Pesner said shifting the swastika, nooses and Confederate flags into a lesser category “is wrong” and “an indelible stain on the Coast Guard and a violation of the good that our nation stands for.”
“I urge you in the strongest terms to immediately rescind this policy and return these symbols of hate to the forbidden category in which they belong,” he wrote.