The Trump administration has taken another step in its broader push against diversity and inclusion efforts, moving to remove a large Pride flag from the historic Stonewall National Monument in New York City.
On Feb. 10, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal announced on Instagram that the Pride flag had been removed over the Feb. 7 weekend, following a Jan. 21 Interior Department memo limiting which flags can be displayed at National Park Service sites. The guidance allows only U.S., agency, and POW/MIA flags, with limited historical exemptions, The Guardian reports.
“They cannot erase our history. Our Pride flag will be raised again. Stay tuned,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote online.
The monument, designated by then-President Barack Obama in 2016, honors the June 1969 uprising that erupted after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The six days of protests helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, making the site a lasting symbol of Pride. But as the Trump administration moves to roll back diversity initiatives and reshape historical displays in national parks, the iconic Pride flag was removed.
The memo stated that Interior Department flagpoles “are not intended to serve as a forum for public free expression,” adding that any approved non-agency flags may be displayed only to reflect the federal government’s official positions.
The removal of the Stonewall Pride flag comes a year after the National Park Service stripped references to transgender and queer people from its Stonewall monument webpage, which covers the area surrounding the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Local leaders criticized the move, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani saying he was “outraged” by the decision.
“New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history,” Mamdani tweeted.
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and the co-chairs of the council’s LGBTQ+ caucus condemned the Pride flag’s removal in a letter to the Trump administration, urging the National Park Service to restore it.
Added Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader, in a statement, “If there’s one thing I know about this latest attempt to rewrite history, stoke division and discrimination, and erase our community pride, it’s this: that flag will return. New Yorkers will see to it.”
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