Trump Removed the Pride Flag From Stonewall and New York Put It Right Back
On February 10, 2026, National Park Service staff took down the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, New York City. They replaced it with an American flag. The order came from a January 21 NPS memo signed by acting Director Jessica Bowron, which restricted all National Park Service sites to displaying only the U.S. flag, the Department of the Interior flag, and the POW/MIA flag.
This is the Stonewall Inn. The birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The site where, in June 1969, a police raid on a gay bar triggered six days of resistance that changed American civil rights forever. President Obama designated it the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history in 2016. In October 2017, a rainbow flag was raised there -- the first officially maintained LGBT flag at any federal monument in the country.
The Trump administration took it down in the middle of the night.
New York's Response
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn't mince words. "I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument," he posted on X. "New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history."
Governor Kathy Hochul, U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand all condemned the removal. Schumer called it "an effin' disgrace."
On Thursday, February 12, hundreds of New Yorkers packed the streets around Christopher Park in Greenwich Village. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal personally helped hoist a new Pride flag onto the flagpole, right next to the existing American flag. The crowd cheered. "We did it," Hoylman-Sigal said.
The federal government didn't authorize the new flag. Raising it was, in itself, an act of defiance.
A Pattern of Erasure
This wasn't the first time the Trump administration targeted Stonewall. A year earlier, references to transgender and queer people were scrubbed from the monument's official NPS website following an executive order signed by President Trump. The flag removal was the next step in a systematic effort to erase LGBTQ+ recognition from federal property.
Trans rights activist Angelica Christina, who was at the rally, put it bluntly: "I'm sadly not surprised that they had the audacity to remove the eight-colored flag right from our neighborhood, right from our safe home."
Legislators are now pushing new legislation to designate the Pride Flag as a congressionally authorized flag at the Stonewall National Monument, which would make future removals a violation of federal law rather than a bureaucratic decision.
The Department of the Interior responded to the flag re-raising by blasting Mamdani and local Democrats as "focused on theatrics." The crowd at Stonewall didn't seem to care.
NPR: Trump Administration Removes Pride Flag From Stonewall
Gothamist: NYC Officials Raise Flag Back at Stonewall