On February 10, 2026, the Trump administration ordered the removal of the LGBTQ Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City—the nation's first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights. The flag, which had been permanently installed by the National Park Service in 2021, was the first Pride flag ever flown over federally-managed land. It was removed under a new NPS memorandum prohibiting “non-agency flags and pennants” that are not the US flag or Interior Department flag.
The Stonewall Inn is where the 1969 Stonewall riots took place—the event widely considered the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ rights movement in America. Removing the Pride flag from this specific site is not a neutral policy about flags—it is a deliberate erasure of LGBTQ history from the very monument created to honor it.
The removal sparked immediate outrage. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “outraged,” stating, “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.” On February 12, hundreds of people including Rep. Jerry Nadler and other New York officials rallied at the site and defiantly restored the Pride flag.
This is part of a broader pattern: in February 2025, the NPS had already removed references to transgender and queer people from the Stonewall monument's web page. The administration is systematically erasing LGBTQ history from federal sites while claiming it's just about flag policy.