US Park Service erases the word 'transgender' from website commemorating Stonewall riot

References to transgender people were removed Thursday from a National Park Service website for the Stonewall National Monument, a park and visitor center in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot that became a pivotal moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The changes were made in the wake of an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.

“This is just cruel and petty,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, posted on X. “Transgender people play a critical role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights — and New York will never allow their contributions to be erased.”

The monument in Manhattan's Greenwich Village section is based in a tiny park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, a bar that became ground zero for the gay rights movement on June 28, 1969, when gay and transgender patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a police raid.

The park service website on Friday was still filled with information about the uprising, including photographs of noted transgender activists.

But the words “transgender” and “queer” had been deleted from text that had been on the site.

Also, the letters T and Q were cut from various references to the acronym LGBTQ and replaced with phrases like the “LGB rights movement” or “LGB civil rights.”

Representatives of the present-day Stonewall Inn, which is part of the national monument, and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, a nonprofit organization associated with the historic bar, expressed anger and outrage over the changes.

“This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonors the immense contributions of transgender individuals — especially transgender women of color — who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the broader fight for LGBTQ+ rights," said organizers of the two entities in a statement.

“They’re trying to literally cis-wash, if you will, LGBTQ history by taking trans folks and saying they didn’t exist then and don’t exist now,” said Stacy Lentz, CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative and a co-owner of The Stonewall Inn. “It is very alarming.”

Angelica Christina, who is board director of the initiative and a transgender woman, said the changes to the website are not surprising given “the constant executive orders the Trump administration has been leveling against the trans community.”

But she said it is shocking and unnerving to see the Stonewall National Monument in particular targeted: “The West Village, and especially the Stonewall Inn, has always been a safe haven for the LGBT community.”

Earlier this week, the homepage for the national monument said that “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal.”

On Thursday, it said: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal.”

The National Park Service did not respond to a message left Thursday seeking comment on the changes. The service previously did not respond to questions about whether Trump's executive order would mean changes for the monument.

Timothy Leonard, Northeast program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a 1.6 million-member nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of national parks and helped push for the Stonewall monument, said “erasing letters or webpages” does not change history or the contributions of the transgender community at Stonewall or elsewhere.

“The National Park Service exists to not only protect and preserve our most cherished places but to educate its millions of annual national park visitors about the inclusive, full history of America,” Leonard said.

Then President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument in 2016.

Last year, a $3.2 million visitor center run by the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Pride Live opened at the site, in partnership with the park service, to tell the Stonewall story in more depth. The center was financed mostly with private donations, except for $450,000 from the park service's charitable arm.

Trump's order declared the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female, based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes. The change is being pitched as a way to protect women from “gender extremism.”

Conservative groups such as the American Family Association have praised the change as one that acknowledges the truth. But experts including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association hold that gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting only of males and females.

FILE - A National Park Service sign marks the Stonewall National Monument outside the Stonewall Inn, Monday, June 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith, File)

FILE - A visitor views a historical exhibit of the Gay rights movement, displayed on fencing dressed with flags affirming LGBTQ identity at the Stonewall National Monument, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

FILE - Pride flags and colors display on the Stonewall Inn bar, marking the site of 1969 riots that followed a police raid of the bar's gay patrons, June 3, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

FILE - Patrons sit at the bar in The Stonewall Inn, in New York's Greenwich Village, Thursday, May 29, 2014. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. flu infections showed signs of a slight decline last week, but health officials say it is not clear that this severe flu season has peaked.

New government data posted Friday — for flu activity through last week — showed declines in medical office visits due to flu-like illness and in the number of states reporting high flu activity.

However, some measures show this season is already surpassing the flu epidemic of last winter, one of the harshest in recent history. And experts believe there is more suffering ahead.

“This is going to be a long, hard flu season,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said, in a statement Friday.

One type of flu virus, called A H3N2, historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. So far this season, that is the type most frequently reported. Even more concerning, more than 91% of the H3N2 infections analyzed were a new version — known as the subclade K variant — that differs from the strain in this year’s flu shots.

The last flu season saw the highest overall flu hospitalization rate since the H1N1 flu pandemic 15 years ago. And child flu deaths reached 289, the worst recorded for any U.S. flu season this century — including that H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009-2010.

So far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses and 180,000 hospitalizations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. It also estimates there have been 7,400 deaths, including the deaths of at least 17 children.

Last week, 44 states reported high flu activity, down slightly from the week before. However, flu deaths and hospitalizations rose.

Determining exactly how flu season is going can be particularly tricky around the holidays. Schools are closed, and many people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

Also, some seasons see a surge in cases, then a decline, and then a second surge.

For years, federal health officials joined doctors' groups in recommending that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine. The shots may not prevent all symptoms but can prevent many infections from becoming severe, experts say.

But federal health officials on Monday announced they will no longer recommend flu vaccinations for U.S. children, saying it is a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors.

“I can’t begin to express how concerned we are about the future health of the children in this country, who already have been unnecessarily dying from the flu — a vaccine preventable disease,” said Michele Slafkosky, executive director of an advocacy organization called Families Fighting Flu.

“Now, with added confusion for parents and health care providers about childhood vaccines, I fear that flu seasons to come could be even more deadly for our youngest and most vulnerable," she said in a statement.

Flu is just one of a group of viruses that tend to strike more often in the winter. Hospitalizations from COVID-19 and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, also have been rising in recent weeks — though were not diagnosed nearly as often as flu infections, according to other federal data.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - Pharmacy manager Aylen Amestoy administers a patient with a seasonal flu vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Miami, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)