New York officials plan to re-raise a rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan after the Trump Administration recently removed it from the site, known for sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, an openly gay Democrat, posted a video on social media Tuesday evening showing the empty flagpole and declaring, “Our community is not going to stand by idly as the Trump Administration tries to erase our history.” Hoylman-Sigal said he and other city officials would reinstall the flag at 4 p.m. Thursday.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also a Democrat, expressed outrage over the removal, posting that “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.” He added that the city has a duty not only to honor the legacy of Stonewall but to live up to it.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and other council members wrote to the acting director of the National Park Service (NPS), expressing “extreme concern” over the flag’s removal from what they described as “sacred ground in the history of civil rights” and demanding its immediate return. Governor Kathy Hochul criticized the Trump Administration for previously minimizing transgender and queer history on the monument’s federal website and then removing the Pride flag. “I will not let this Administration rollback the rights we fought so hard for,” she said.
Other Democratic lawmakers joined the condemnation. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the removal “deeply outrageous” and demanded it be reversed, while Representative Jerry Nadler, who lobbied for federal recognition of Stonewall before its 2016 designation as a national monument, called the move another example of the Trump Administration’s effort to erase the LGBTQ+ community. Nadler vowed to fight for the flag’s reinstatement.
Demonstrators protested Tuesday evening outside the park. Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn, which became a symbol of LGBTQ+ resistance after the 1969 police raid, said removing the flag “is an attempt to erase a part of the American struggle and the American story that LGBTQ folks did to make sure that we have equality.” Pride flags at the Stonewall Inn itself remain in place.
The Department of the Interior said that under federal guidance, only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on National Park Service flagpoles, though exemptions exist for flags that provide historical context. When asked about the city’s plans to re-raise the flag, the department responded that local officials should focus on city services instead of flag disputes.
The Stonewall changes reflect broader Trump Administration efforts to alter national parks and limit diversity and inclusion programs. During Trump’s first term, the federal government denied a nearby flagpole was on federal land, leaving the city to raise its own Pride flag. In 2022, under the Biden Administration, a new federal flagpole was installed, and the Pride flag was officially raised.
