The Trump administration has removed the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument—the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement and the nation’s first federally recognized queer historic site.
And in response, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is demanding the National Park Service restore the Pride flag to the Stonewall National Monument.
WHAT’S GOING ON: The flag quietly disappeared from the Greenwich Village landmark following new federal guidance issued by the Department of the Interior on January 21. The order restricts what can fly at National Park Service sites to only U.S. flags or congressionally authorized flags. Translation: Pride flags don’t make the cut.
It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on LGBTQ+ visibility across federal properties. Mamdani is pushing back hard against what he calls an erasure of queer history at the very site where the 1969 Stonewall uprising sparked the gay liberation movement.
I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument. New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 10, 2026
Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to…
WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t just about a flag—it’s about symbolism and power. The Stonewall Inn and surrounding area became the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights in 2016 under President Obama. Removing the Pride flag from this specific location is a deliberate slap in the face to the community, erasing visibility at the most historically significant site in American queer history. The uprising at Stonewall happened because LGBTQ+ people were tired of being invisible, criminalized, and brutalized.
Now, the federal government is essentially telling them to disappear again.
THE DETAILS: Mamdani has been vocal about the Trump administration’s systematic attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. The flag removal at Stonewall fits into a larger pattern: the administration has moved to strip transgender protections, ban Pride flags from federal buildings, and purge references to LGBTQ+ people from government websites and communications.
BOTTOM LINE:
The fight over the Pride flag at Stonewall is about more than fabric and colors. It’s about whether the federal government will acknowledge LGBTQ+ people exist—and whether their history deserves to be honored or erased. Mamdani is making clear that New York won’t accept this quiet deletion of queer identity from public life without a fight.