A rainbow pride flag has been removed from the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, N.Y., because of a directive from the Trump Administration. Credit – Luiz C. Ribeiro,Sheetal Banchariya\u2014New York Daily News\/Tribune News Service\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
New York officials plan to re-raise a rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan after the Trump Administration removed it in recent days from the site known for kickstarting the modern LGBT rights movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, an openly gay Democrat, posted a video on X<\/a> on Tuesday evening, showing where the flag was supposed to be and saying, \u201cOur community is not going to stand by idly as the Trump Administration tries to erase our history.\u201d Hoylman-Sigal said that he and other officials would reinstall the flag at the monument at 4 p.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, also a Democrat, similarly said he was \u201coutraged<\/a>\u201d over the flag\u2019s removal. \u201cNew York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history,\u201d Mamdani posted on social media. \u201cOur city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Julie Menin, speaker of the city council, and other councilmembers wrote a letter<\/a> to the acting director of the National Park Service, the federal agency overseeing monuments, on Tuesday to express \u201cextreme concern\u201d over the flag\u2019s removal from what they said was \u201csacred ground in the history of civil rights\u201d and to demand the flag\u2019s immediate return.<\/p>\n Governor Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, in a post on X<\/a> criticized the Trump Administration for first diminishing transgender history from the monument\u2014last year, the National Park Service\u2019s website pages<\/a> on Stonewall omitted<\/a> references to transgender and queer individuals and even shortened the acronym to LGB to refer to the community\u2014and then, removing the Pride flag. \u201cI will not let this Administration rollback the rights we fought so hard for,\u201d Hochul said.<\/p>\n Other Democratic lawmakers from New York also slammed the flag\u2019s removal: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer condemned<\/a> the \u201cdeeply outrageous action\u201d and said it \u201cmust be reversed right now,\u201d and Rep. Jerry Nadler, who advocated for federal recognition of the site before former President Barack Obama designated<\/a> it a national monument in 2016, called<\/a> the move another \u201cdisgusting example of the Trump Administration’s effort to erase the LGBTQ+ community\u201d and added that he \u201cwill fight to see that the Pride flag is raised again.\u201d<\/p>\n Demonstrators also protested<\/a> Tuesday evening at the park. \u201cMy business partners and I bought that bar 20 years ago so something like this would never happen,\u201d said Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn. \u201cTaking that flag down 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.\u201d Pride flags at the Stonewall Inn itself\u2014a gay bar that became a symbol of LGBT resistance after an early morning police raid in June 1969 prompted riots against authorities in protest of anti-LGBT discrimination\u2014remain up, but the symbol was removed from the national monument site across the street, which was first reported by Gay City News<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a statement, the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service\u2019s parent agency, said that \u201cunder government-wide guidance, including General Services Administration policy and Department of the Interior direction, only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions. Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n The guidance stems from a Jan. 21 department memo<\/a> stating that \u201conly the U.S. Flag, flags of the DOI, and the POW\/MIA flag will be flown by the NPS\u201d in spaces the National Park Service manages. But the memo provides some exemptions, including flags that \u201cprovide historical context,\u201d those that are \u201cpart of historic reenactments or living history programs,\u201d among others.<\/p>\n TIME did not receive an immediate response from the Interior Department on how it would respond to local officials re-raising the flag.<\/p>\n The changes to the Stonewall Monument come as the Administration has made significant changes to national parks<\/a> as well as to curb what it views as diversity, equity, and inclusion<\/a> efforts across the government.<\/p>\n During Trump\u2019s first term in 2017, the Interior Department actually denied<\/a> that a flagpole near the national monument was on federal land and did not participate in a flag-raising ceremony for the Pride flag. The city instead flew its own Pride flag there, which still remains in place, ABC News reported<\/a>. During the Biden Administration in 2022, a new federal flagpole was installed<\/a> at the site and the Pride flag that has since been taken down was officially raised on it.<\/p>\n