Trump administration removes Pride flag from Stonewall national monument; Mamdani slams move

Donald Trump’s administration has removed a large rainbow Pride flag that had been flying over the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. The landmark is widely recognised as the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.The flag’s removal came weeks after the Department of the Interior issued federal guidance on displaying “nonagency” flags in the National Park System, which includes a small park in front of the Stonewall Inn, the bar for which the federal monument is named.Some elected officials in New York said the removal of the flag from the Greenwich Village monument in downtown Manhattan was part of efforts by Trump, a Republican, to curb the rights of gay and transgender people.More than 100 people gathered outside the Stonewall Inn late Tuesday afternoon to protest the flag's removal.Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, said he was outraged and described the move as an “act of erasure.” "New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history," Mamdani said through a post on X. Several officials said they plan to raise another Pride flag on the now bare flagpole before the end of the week, as cited by Reuters.

The flagpole and monument stand in Christopher Park, the site where gay, lesbian, and transgender New Yorkers protested after a late-night police raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969, at a time when raids on gay bars were routine. The Stonewall uprising is widely seen as a turning point in the gay rights movement."To have somebody take down something that is so meaningful to us and to our community outside a historic site like that is basically a slap in the face," Jade Runk, 37, a trans community organiser was quoted as saying by AFP."It's a message saying 'we don't want you to exist'," Runk added. Trump and other Republican politicians have sought to curtail LGBT rights, particularly those of transgender people.While criticising transgender people, the US president has used the term "gender ideology extremism" during his campaign. Days after returning to the office, he signed an executive order declaring only two official genders in the United States, male and female.A month later, the National Park Service removed references to transgender and queer people from the Stonewall National Monument website, with other government departments implementing similar changes.Trump has directed federal agencies to adopt a policy recognising two immutable sexes, and every mention of “LGBT” on the Stonewall monument’s official website has been replaced with “LGB”.