NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration has stopped flying a rainbow flag at the Stonewall National Monument, angering activists who see the change as a symbolic swipe at the country's first national monument to LGBTQ+ history.
The multicolored flag, one of the world's most well known emblems of LGBTQ+ rights, was quietly removed in recent days from a flagpole on the National Park Service-run site, which centers on a tiny park in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. It's across the street from the Stonewall Inn, the gay bar where patrons' rebellion against a police raid helped catalyze the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The park service said it's simply complying with recent guidance that clarifies longstanding flag policies and applies them consistently. A Jan. 21 park service memo largely restricts the agency to flying the flags of the United States, the Department of the Interior and the POW/MIA flag.
LGBTQ+ rights activists including Ann Northrop don't buy the explanation.
“It’s just a disgusting slap in the face,” she said by phone Tuesday as advocates and City Council members planned rallies, and some city and state officials vowed to raise the flag again.
One of them, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, called the removal “petty and vindictive.”
“On one level, removing a flag seems extremely, I guess, pedestrian. But the symbolism of doing it here at Stonewall is what is so profoundly disappointing and frightening,” said Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to hold his office. The National Parks Conservation Association, a parks advocacy group, also said the flag was part of the monument's history and should stay.
A rainbow flag still appears on a city-owned pole just outside the park, and smaller ones wave along its fence. But advocates fought for years to see the banner fly high every day on federal property, and they saw it as an important gesture of recognition when the flag first went up in 2019.
“That’s why we have those flag-raisings — because we wanted the national sanction to make it a national park,” said Northrop, who co-hosts a weekly cable news program called “GAY USA.” She spoke at a flag-related ceremony at the monument in 2017.
The flag is the latest point of contention between LGBTQ+ activists and President Donald Trump's administrations over the Stonewall monument, which Democratic former President Barack Obama created in 2016. Activists were irritated when, during the Republican Trump's first administration, the park service kept a bureaucratic distance from the raising of the rainbow flag on the city's pole.
Then, soon after Trump returned to office last year and declared that his administration would recognize only two genders, the government scrubbed verbal references to transgender people from the park service website for the Stonewall monument.
Meanwhile the Trump administration has more broadly reviewed interpretive materials at national parks, museums and landmarks and endeavored to remove or alter descriptions that in the government's view “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
The park service did not answer specific questions Tuesday about the Stonewall site and the flag policy, including whether any flags were removed from other parks.
“Stonewall National Monument continues to preserve and interpret the site’s historic significance through exhibits and programs,” the agency said in a statement.
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Ted Shaffrey in New York contributed.
Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal speaks in the Stonewall National Monument about how the Trump administration has stopped flying a rainbow flag at the location, right center, adjacent to the Stonewall Inn, left, New York, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Small Pride flags adorn a fence in the Stonewall National Monument while the Trump administration has stopped flying a rainbow flag on the pole, center, in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The Trump administration has stopped flying a rainbow flag on the pole, center, in the Stonewall National Monument, adjacent to the Stonewall Inn, background center, in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
More than two dozen privacy and advocacy organizations are calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to remove a network of covert license plate readers deployed across Southern California that the groups believe feed data into a controversial U.S. Border Patrol predictive domestic intelligence program that scans the country's roadways for suspicious travel patterns.
"We ask that your administration investigate and release the relevant permits, revoke them, and initiate the removal of these devices," read the letter sent Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice and other nonprofits.
An Associated Press investigation published in November revealed that the U.S. Border Patrol, an agency under U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had hidden license plate readers in ordinary traffic safety equipment. The data collected by the Border Patrol plate readers was then fed into a predictive intelligence program monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.
AP obtained land use permits from Arizona showing that the Border Patrol went to great lengths to conceal its surveillance equipment in that state, camouflaging it by placing it inside orange and yellow construction barrels dotting highways.
The letter said the groups' researchers have identified a similar network of devices in California, finding about 40 license plate readers in San Diego and Imperial counties, both of which border Mexico. More than two dozen of the plate readers identified by the groups were hidden in construction barrels.
They could not determine of the ownership of every device, but the groups said in the letter that they obtained some permits from the California Department of Transportation, showing both the Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration had applied for permission to place readers along state highways. DEA shares its license plate reader data with Border Patrol, documents show.
The letter cited the AP's reporting, which found that Border Patrol uses a network of cameras to scan and record vehicle license plate information. An algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Agents appeared to be looking for vehicles making short trips to the border region, claiming that such travel is indicative of potential drug or human smuggling.
Federal agents in turn sometimes refer drivers they deem suspicious to local law enforcement who make a traffic stop citing a reason like speeding or lane change violations. Drivers often have no idea they have been caught up in a predictive intelligence program being run by a federal agency.
The AP identified at least two cases in which California residents appeared to have been caught up in the Border Patrol's surveillance of domestic travel patterns. In one 2024 incident described in court documents, a Border Patrol agent pulled over the driver of a Nissan Altima based in part on vehicle travel data showing that it took the driver six hours to travel the approximately 50 miles between the U.S.-Mexican border and Oceanside, California, where the agent had been on patrol.
“This type of delay in travel after crossing the International Border from Mexico is a common tactic used by persons involved in illicit smuggling,” the agent wrote in a court document.
In another case, Border Patrol agents said in a court document in 2023 they detained a woman at an internal checkpoint because she had traveled a circuitous route between Los Angeles and Phoenix. In both cases, law enforcement accused the drivers of smuggling immigrants in the country unlawfully and were seeking to seize their property or charge them with a crime.
The intelligence program, which has existed under administrations of both parties, has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers since the AP revealed its existence last year.
The California Department of Transportation and the office of Newsom, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Courts have generally upheld license plate reader collection on public roads but have curtailed warrantless government access to other kinds of persistent tracking data that might reveal sensitive details about people's movements, such as GPS devices or cellphone location data. Some scholars and civil libertarians argues that large-scale collection systems like plate readers might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
“Increasingly, courts have recognized that the use of surveillance technologies can violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Although this area of law is still developing, the use of LPRs and predictive algorithms to track and flag individuals’ movements represents the type of sweeping surveillance that should raise constitutional concerns,” the organizations wrote.
CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously said the agency uses plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and their use of the technology is “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”
DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Burke reported from San Francisco. Tau reported from Washington.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
FILE - A license plate reader used by U.S. Border Patrol is hidden in a traffic cone while capturing passing vehicles on AZ Highway 85, Oct. 21, 2025, in Gila Bend, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
