Trump administration agrees to keep flying Pride flag at Stonewall monument

New York politicians and activists raise a rainbow flag on a pole in Christopher Park (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

The Trump administration has agreed to keep flying a rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, reversing course after removing the banner in February.

The government revealed the decision as it seeks to settle a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ+ and historic preservation groups who had sought to block the removal.

A judge must still approve the agreement.

According to court papers, the Interior Department and National Park Service “have confirmed their intention to maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall”.

It will not be removed, except for “maintenance or other practical purposes”.

People demonstrate after New York politicians and activists raised a rainbow flag (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

Under the agreement, within a week, the Park Service will hang three flags on the Stonewall monument flagpole — each measuring three feet by five feet.

The Pride flag will fly between the US flag and Park Service flag.

The Pride flag had become a flashpoint for arguments over President Donald Trump’s approach to the Stonewall site — the first national monument commemorating LGBTQ+ history — and various other historical properties.

After a years-long campaign by activists who wanted the flag symbolising LGBTQ+ pride to be flown daily inside the park service-run site, the banner was formally installed in 2022, during Joe Biden’s tenure.

At the time, park service officials in New York called the display a sign of the government’s commitment to “telling the complex and diverse histories of all Americans”.

But in February, the park service removed the flag, in what the agency explained as compliance with federal guidance on flag displays.

A January 21 park service memo largely restricts the agency to displaying the US, Department of the Interior and POW/MIA flags, with exemptions that include providing “historical context”.

The park service insisted that the monument “remains committed to preserving and interpreting the history and significance of this site” through various exhibits and programmes.

But LGBTQ+ activists saw the flag’s removal as a targeted affront meant to diminish a site that is all about their fight for rights and visibility.

Advocates and some New York Democratic elected officials turned up soon after with another rainbow flag and — after some heated moments when the politicians seemed content to leave it on a separate, lower pole — raised it up alongside the US flag that the park service had installed.

Barack Obama created the Stonewall monument in 2016. The monument centres on a tiny park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, the gay bar where a 1969 police raid sparked an uprising and helped catalyse the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

After Mr Trump returned to office last year, he took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and protections for transgender people.

In one outcome of his policies, many references to transgender people were excised from the monument’s website and materials.

Mr Trump’s administration similarly has put national parks, museums and landmarks under a messaging microscope, aiming to remove or alter materials that the government says are “divisive or partisan” or “inappropriately disparage Americans”.