Elected officials gathered at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan on Thursday to condemn a Trump administration directive that had led to the removal of the site’s rainbow Pride flag.
Officials said they would work with activists to re-raise the flag later in the day, setting up a defiant response to the administration’s assault on diversity initiatives at a federal site honoring the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.
“The most Stonewall thing that we could possibly do is put that flag back up ourselves instead of waiting for the president,” Councilman Chi Ossé, a co-chair of the City Council’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus, said at the news conference.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, told reporters that the flag would go back up the flagpole at 4 p.m., “in the memory of those whose shoulders we stand on, who fought for L.G.B.T. equality and who pointed the direction forward for generations of queer Americans.”
The Pride flag was quietly removed from the monument in recent days, and its disappearance was met with outrage from elected officials and many New Yorkers. Julie Menin, the Council speaker, criticized the secretive way the flag appeared to have been removed, saying it “was taken in the middle of the night.”
“There was no discussion,” she said on Thursday. “There was no warning. It was taken.”
On Wednesday afternoon, federal employees raised an American flag on the pole where the Pride flag had once flown. Mr. Hoylman-Sigal said he and other elected officials planned to raise the Pride flag alongside the U.S. flag, not in place of it.
The Pride flag was removed weeks after the Department of the Interior issued federal guidance that addressed the display of “non-agency” flags in the national park system, which includes a small park established in 2016 in front of the Stonewall Inn, the bar for which the federal monument is named.
When asked this week about the flag’s removal, the National Park Service pointed to that federal guidance, which was issued on Jan. 21. It said in a statement that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on N.P.S.-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”
“Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance,” it added. The agency said it continued to preserve the historic significance of the Stonewall National Monument through exhibits and programs.
Since President Trump’s inauguration last year, his administration has mounted a broad assault on what it views as diversity initiatives, and has frequently enlisted the National Park Service to police the language used or the symbols displayed at public sites.
In the last year, the Park Service has removed an exhibit on George Washington’s ownership of slaves from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, dismantled a plaque about climate change at the Muir Woods National Monument in California, and stopped showing films about immigrant and female textile workers at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.
The administration also ordered Pride flags to be removed from American sites overseas, through a State Department directive issued last year that said only American flags could be flown at U.S. Embassies and Consulates worldwide. That represented a shift from the Biden administration, which at times displayed Pride and Black Lives Matter flags.
The removal of the Pride flag was the second time in the last 12 months that the Trump administration has targeted the monument, which is the first historic site in the United States dedicated to the nation’s L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Park Service removed the word “transgender” from prominent sections of the monument’s website as part of the administration’s push against diversity initiatives. That move prompted hundreds of people to gather in Greenwich Village to protest what they saw as an attack on the symbolic heart of the gay rights movement.
The Stonewall Inn, a bar on Christopher Street, was raided by the police in June 1969, setting off three days of protests and riots in the surrounding streets. Since then, the site has become well known around the world, and L.G.B.T.Q. events and organizations in several countries, including Britain, Australia and Germany, have been named in its honor.
The original Pride flag debuted in 1978, according to the Park Service’s website, with each of its eight colors symbolizing an aspect of the L.G.B.T.Q. community’s experience.
The Stonewall National Monument was designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama. The 7.7-acre site encompasses the Stonewall Inn, Christopher Park and several nearby streets and sidewalks.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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