The U.S. Coast Guard is scrambling to clarify proposed internal policy changes that appeared to loosen how the service branch handles the conduct within its ranks involving hate symbols including nooses, swastikas, and other extremist symbols — touching off a political firestorm inside the nation's smallest military branch after the Space Force.

The controversy centers on a little-noticed personnel directive signed on Nov. 13 by Rear Admiral Charles Fosse, the assistant commandant for personnel, following a report by the Washington Post . The document, titled "Harassing Behavior Prevention, Response and Accountability," contained a provision that proposed replacing longstanding language that explicitly identified swastikas, nooses, Confederate iconography and other symbols of racial or

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