“Information has impact,” the Washington Post has insisted. And on Thursday, the paper showed how quickly its reporting could lead to results. At the same time, it got labeled as a purveyor of fake news because of the change it led to.
“U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols,” the Post reported, citing publicly available updated guidelines set to take effect Dec. 15 that revised the description of the Nazi insignia and representation of lynchings to “potentially divisive.”
The reporting, which comes as the Trump Administration has pledged to combat antisemitism while the Defense Department (which the Coast Guard does not sit under) has criticized anti-harassment policy as “overly broad,” sparked immediate outcry from the public and members of Congress.
Rep. Rick Larsen (D, Wash.) posted on X: “Lynching is a federal hate crime. The world defeated the Nazis in 1945. The debate on these symbols is over. They symbolize hate. Coast Guard: be better.”
“This is disgusting,” Sen. Ed Markey (D, Mass.) posted. “We cannot let the Trump administration normalize hate.”
Rep. Lauren Underwood (D, Ill.) posted on X that she met with Coast Guard acting commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday, who “committed to publishing an updated version” of the policy later in the evening. “Displays of hate have no place in our armed services,” Underwood said.
Tara Copp, one of the two reporters of the Post story, said on X that the Coast Guard initially did not respond to requests for comment, but after publication, a Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Armed Forces branch disagreed with the story and that it would look into the policy and “will be reviewing the language” that apparently downgrades the classification of these symbols. Lunday also reportedly sent an email to the force afterwards that emphasized the symbols remained “prohibited.”
“The claims that the U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses or other extremist imagery as prohibited symbols are categorically false,” Lunday said in a statement posted on X. “These symbols have been and remain prohibited in the Coast Guard per policy.”
Lunday added that the Coast Guard “remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a safe, respectful and professional workplace” and that “any display, use or promotion of such symbols, as always, will be thoroughly investigated and severely punished” as those symbols “violate our core values.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, also blasted the Post’s report. “The @washingtonpost should be embarrassed it published this fake crap,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X. The DHS’s official X account also posted: “Y’all are just making things up now.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D, Hawaii) noted the apparent contradiction in the sequence of events in a post on X: “So they are not approving the policy change that was in the works because the Washington Post reported about it. Good. But that means the reporting was accurate.”
