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The Trump administration has removed a large pride flag from the Stonewall national monument in New York City, marking the latest move by the federal government to end diversity initiatives and sanitize the history shared in national parks.
The monument commemorates the June 1969 riots that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The six days of protests against the police action were a key moment in sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the site has since become a national symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride.
“They cannot erase our history. Our Pride flag will be raised again,” the Manhattan borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is gay, wrote in a social media post. He confirmed that the Pride flag had been removed over the 7 February weekend following a 21 January memorandum from the interior department.
The memo from the interior department, which oversees the National Park Service, provided “guidance to superintendents and site managers on policies and procedures for the display and flying of non-agency flags and pennants”, stating only US flags, agency flags and the POW/MIA flag are allowed at parks, while including a list of exemptions that included flags that “provide historical context”.
Interior department flagpoles are “not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public”, the memo read. “Rather, approved non-agency flags and pennants may be flown as an expression of the Federal Government’s official sentiments.”
In a statement to the Guardian, the interior department said: “The policy governing flag displays on federal property has been in place for decades. Recent guidance clarifies how that longstanding policy is applied consistently across NPS-managed sites.” It added that, “Stonewall National Monument continues to preserve and interpret the site’s historic significance through exhibits and programs.”
Julie Menin, the New York city council speaker, and the co-chairs of the council’s LGBTQ+ caucus, denounced the removal of the Pride flag and urged the National Park Service to return the flag in a letter to the Trump administration.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader from New York, denounced the move in a statement, saying: “The removal of the Pride Rainbow Flag from the Stonewall National Monument is a deeply outrageous action that must be reversed right now.” He added: “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.”
New Yorkers are already planning to protest against the action, with a demonstration scheduled for Tuesday evening.
Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn which operates independently from the national monument, called the removal of the flag an “awful attack on the park”. “We can’t trust the government with our history or with our stories,” she said.
Barack Obama designated the site as a national monument in 2016. In 2017, the site was slated to raise a Pride flag when the then interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, certified the flagpole as located on city, not federal, land, Gay City News reported at the time. In June 2022, under the Biden administration, the Pride flag went up on federal land on the first day of Pride month. Soon after Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024, his administration eliminated all references to transgender people from the National Park Service website for the Stonewall national monument. In June 2025, the Stonewall national monument excluded transgender and progress flags from its Pride month display.
