The federal government has agreed to officially restore the Pride flag that was removed from the Stonewall National Monument in New York’s Greenwich Village.
The move marks a reversal by the Trump administration, which had the flag removed back in February. It comes on the heels of a lawsuit brought by several nonprofit groups against Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the National Park Service and others. The agreement to restore the flag settles the lawsuit.
The National Park Service said it removed the flag under guidance from the Department of Interior, which had said non-agency flags could not be officially displayed on flagpoles managed by the National Park Service.
The removal sparked a large outcry, with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani calling it “an act of erasure” and Gov. Kathy Hochul calling it “a shameful attempt to erase our LGBTQ history.”
The flag was defiantly re-raised days later by elected officials and New Yorkers, but the move was not sanctioned by the federal government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went on to push for legislation to protect the Pride flag from being removed in the future, calling the effort to remove it in the first place “a deeply outrageous action.”
The deal announced Monday calls for the flag to be restored in official capacity within seven days.
Schumer hailed the settlement, saying the Trump administration was “forced to settle and heed our demands.”
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said he’s “thrilled … the Trump administration has blinked and backed down from its contemptuous attempt to erase American history.”
The Stonewall National Monument was designated a national monument in 2016, the first in the nation dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights and history, commemorating the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement following police raids at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.
In February of 2025, references to transgender and queer people were removed from the monument following an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office. That executive ordered called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female. The letters T and Q were also removed from the LGBTQ acronym on the monument’s website, replaced with “LGB rights movement” and “LGB civil rights.”