The Trump administration has eliminated an LGBTQ Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, the United States’ first nationwide monument to LGBTQ rights, following a directive proscribing what sorts of flags might be flown on National Park websites.
The removing is the newest change to the monument, because the administration strikes to alter what is on display at nationwide parks throughout the nation and impose President Donald Trump’s views on different US cultural and historic establishments.
According to a National Park Service memorandum, the company prohibits “non-agency flags and pennants” that aren’t the US flag or the Interior Department flag. NPS performing Director Jessica Bowron signed the directive in January, and there are exceptions for historic flags, army flags, or flags of federally acknowledged Tribal nations throughout the parks.
NCS has reached out to the Interior Department and NPS, in addition to a co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, for remark.
Gay City News first reported the Pride flag’s removing.
In February 2025, NPS eliminated references to transgender and queer folks on its web page for the Stonewall monument, which consists of the realm across the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
The iconic homosexual bar is broadly considered because the birthplace of the fashionable LGBTQ rights motion within the US: It was the location of a 1969 police raid that sparked a fierce backlash from its patrons and led to days of protests and skirmishes between LGBTQ rioters and police. Former President Barack Obama designated the monument in 2016 throughout his second time period.
Local leaders have slammed the administration’s transfer, with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani saying he was “outraged” by the removing. “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history,” he stated in a post to X on Tuesday.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal informed NCS, “It’s part of the Trump administration’s attempt to reshape the Park Service in a manner that conforms with his right-wing base of support, excluding minority groups and LGBTQ people.”
Hoylman-Sigal stated he was working to boost the flag once more on the web site of the federal monument on Thursday, regardless of the brand new federal steerage.
“We’re just going to try to fly it again. It may be taken down. We may be blocked from even doing so, there may be federal officers preventing us, but we certainly are going to try in the spirit of stonewall,” he added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York referred to as the flag’s removing “deeply outrageous,” including in a submit on X, “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.”
The NPS memo is the newest motion within the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to purge cultural establishments of supplies that battle with the president’s political directives — and expunge references to trans and nonbinary folks throughout federal businesses.
Trump issued a directive in the beginning of his second time period that the federal authorities solely acknowledge two genders: female and male. Since then, businesses together with the State Department and CDC have truncated the “LGBTQ+” acronym to easily “LGB”; erased references to trans, queer and intersex folks; and eliminated internet pages and information units regarding the teams.
Last October, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a longtime bureau employee who displayed a Pride flag in his workspace throughout a previous task, NCS beforehand reported.
In notifying the person of their dismissal, Patel didn’t particularly point out the Pride flag by title however stated the agent trainee was being summarily dismissed for previous “poor judgment” and “an inappropriate display of political signage,” sources beforehand informed NCS.
The transfer additionally comes because the Trump administration has extra broadly eliminated NPS supplies targeted on variety.
In January, NPS removed a long-standing exhibit on slavery in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, prompting town to sue the administration.
The exhibit, situated on the President’s House Site the place Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived, options shows honoring people enslaved by Washington and a historic timeline of American slavery.
And final yr, the American Battle Monuments Commission, a small, little-known federal company, took down a cemetery display within the Netherlands that commemorated the contributions of African American WWII troopers and highlighted the discrimination they confronted.
NCS’s Gloria Pazmino and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.