Susan Breindel, an activist with New York City's Downtown Nasty Women Social Group, poses outside Stonewall Inn on Feb. 12, 2026.
Jack Walker for The Advocate
As local leaders raised a new Pride flag at Stonewall last Thursday, Kiki Ball-Change watched through sunglasses, bundled up in a matching fur coat. Replacing it was one piece of the puzzle, she said. More important was that hundreds of people rallied against the federal crackdown on LGBTQ civil liberties.
“It’s bigger than a flag,” said the drag queen. “What we’re seeing now is the community coming together to say that, regardless of how you feel about the flag, we will not accept the constant chipping away of our rights.”
President Donald Trump recently banned Pride flags and other non-government symbols from being displayed on certain federal property. That included Stonewall National Monument, where riots against police raids in 1969 paved the way for the modern gay rights movement.
Kiki Ball-Change poses outside Stonewall Inn on Feb. 12, 2026.Jack Walker for The Advocate
Stonewall’s flag was removed Tuesday, but with swift blowback. Two days later, hundreds rallied at the site as local leaders unveiled a new Pride flag.
Like Kiki Ball-Change, several LGBTQ activists told The Advocate they would double down on organizing against Trump, with the flag’s removal symbolizing the stakes for the LGBTQ community.
“This is sacred ground,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “This is a fight that people aren’t giving up. It reminds me that we got us. If the government’s going to fail us, we are going to fill the gap. That’s always been the role of queer and trans folks.”
Robinson said her group has advocated against anti-LGBTQ policies from the federal government, and provides resources to educators, families and others to promote LGBTQ inclusion. The group will also be urging people to vote in November’s midterm election, she said.
Leaders carry the LGBTQ+ Pride flag to be reraised at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. Jack Walker for The Advocate
The upcoming elections were a focal point for other organizers, too. That included Tyler Hack, who is executive director of the Christopher Street Project — a political action committee founded in 2025 to elect pro-trans officials to Congress.
“We also want to make sure that we do the work to flip those seats in November,” they said. To “ensure that we have a majority in Congress that is not beholden to the Trump administration and their anti-trans crusade.”
Beyond policy change, other community leaders called for renewed focus on the material needs of LGBTQ people. Im Lynde, executive director of New York City Pride, said his organization engages in year-round advocacy for the LGBTQ community. The group conducts fundraising and each year offers grants to local LGBTQ-serving nonprofits, according to its website.
“It's a 365-day movement,” Lynde said. “It's not just something that happens in June and then we disappear.”
Onlookers rally outside Stonewall Inn as a new Pride flag is raised. Jack Walker for The Advocate
Councilmember Chi Ossé sponsored a resolution opposing the flag removal that passed the New York City Council Thursday. At city hall on Thursday, he contextualized the fight to uphold LGBTQ rights in a broader effort to protect personal freedoms and quality of life.
“What we should be doing as queer members of the city council, and as a city council as a whole, is making sure that we’re actually protecting the bodies of our neighbors,” Ossé said. “Making sure they have gender-affirming care. … Protecting most especially our trans siblings, and ensuring that they have affordable housing.”
Kei Williams is executive director of the NEW Pride Agenda, a New York-based LGBTQ advocacy group. At last Thursday’s protest, they said that their group has been rallying against anti-LGBTQ federal policies more broadly, like removing mentions of trans identity from historical sites and government websites.
“It's super important that at this point in time we stand for our values, but we also show up visibly,” Williams said. “If you have hundreds of folks who are out here on a chillier day, I understand that this moment really matters to our community.”
This article was written as part of the Future of Queer Media fellowship program at The Advocate, which is underwritten by a generous gift from Morrison Media Group. The program helps support the next generation of LGBTQ+ journalists.
Former Donald Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, now a cohost on Fox News Channel’sThe Five, says those who hate Trump need someone to love them. “You need a hug or a husband or a hobby or a dog,” she said on the show’s Tuesday broadcast.
That apparently includes lesbian comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who has been married twice to women. In the episode, Conway and her colleagues lambasted O’Donnell for her anti-Trump statements, such as those in a recent TikTok video in which O’Donnell called for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment, among other things, provides for the removal of a president who cannot perform the duties of the office.
Kellyanne Conway: She moved to Ireland, but she never moved on | Fox News Video www.foxnews.com
“We gotta do it soon, before the November elections,” O’Donnell said. “Because you know he’s going to do anything he can to start a war and then declare no elections because of that war. He needs to be stopped.”
To Conway and her cohosts, that’s a sign of “Trump derangement syndrome,” an illogical hatred of the president. They claimed — falsely — that he has had a very successful first year in office in his second term.
O’Donnell “moved to Ireland but never moved on,” Conway said. She also blasted O’Donnell for terming Trump a “nameless blob of negative energy,” saying it was a case of “a slob calling someone a blob.”
Conway herself may need someone to love her. She is divorced from George Conway, a lawyer and former Republican who has become a sharp critic of Trump. Conway has filed paperwork to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District, although he hasn't made an official announcement. If he does, he'd be one of numerous candidates seeking to succeed longtime U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Dem who is retiring.
Mamdani announced Tuesday at a press conference that he has appointed Lillian Bonsignore, a 56-year-old out lesbian and decorated first responder, to lead the FDNY once he is inaugurated on January 1. In response to the news, the billionaire and Tesla CEO took to social media over the weekend to attack Bonsignore, fallaciously claiming that "people will die because of this."
“Proven experience matters when lives are at stake,” Musk wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, which he owns.
Musk's implication that Bonsignore is inexperienced is completely false, as Mamdani was quick to point out. He wrote in post directly replying to Musk, “Experience does matter, which is why I appointed the person who spent more than 30 years at EMS. You know, the workforce that addresses at least 70% of all calls coming into FDNY?”
Bonsignore joined the FDNY in 1991 as an emergency medical technician, serving 31 years before her retirement in 2022. She was named chief of the FDNY’s Emergency Medical Services division in 2019, becoming the first woman to head the division and first uniformed woman to be a four-star chief in the department. Her tenure included working as a first responder in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and leading the EMS division during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bonsignore's appointment makes her the second woman and first out gay person to serve as FDNY chief. It also marks the first time women have led both the city's fire and police departments, as Jessica Tisch is expected to stay in her post as police commissioner when Mamdani takes office.
“Bonsignore’s calm, decisive leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic — when EMS professionals were more vital than ever — is exactly the kind of leadership our city needs in moments of uncertainty,” Mamdani said in a statement to City & State New Yorkbefore the announcement.
Meanwhile, Musk's experience includes heading the failed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which shut down within just ten months after failing to meet its goals. The department was responsible for firing about 300,000 federal workers, including 2,000 staff members of USAID in the complete dissolution of the U.S. humanitarian department. Data models by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols estimate that as of June, over 640,000 people globally have died due to losing USAID support, at least two-thirds of them children.
If you thought Project 2025 was bad, wait, there’s more: It’s continuing into 2026.
The Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank that created Project 2025, has posted its priorities for 2026, and while it’s not calling this Project 2026, that’s basically what it is.
It’s officially a list of the foundation’s priorities for 2025-2026, under the title “Restoring America’s Promise.” It was published in February but has recently received new attention due to social media posts dubbing it Project 2026.
“Project 2025 was an effort of more than 100 organizations convened by Heritage to prepare for the next conservative administration,” a Heritage spokesperson told Newsweek.“That administration is now in office, so all policy and personnel decisions are up to the president and his team. … There is no Project 2026 and will not be, regardless of what leftist lunatics make up on BlueSky.”
“Restoring America’s Promise” is fairly brief, especially as compared to Project 2025, which took up 900 pages. It has nine sections, including “Counter the CCP” — the Chinese Communist Party — “Unleash American Energy,” “Eliminate Regulation, Inflation, and Spending,” and “Root Out the Deep State,” “deep state” being the extreme right’s term for career federal workers who are supposedly undermining conservative plans.
The sections most relevant to LGBTQ+ people are “Put Family First” and “Expand Education Freedom.” “Every child conceived deserves to be born to a married mother and father who will love, guide, and protect them throughout their lives,” the former says. “But family breakdown and rampant abortion tears at the soul of our country and saps it of strength and moral authority. Radical ideologies that deny social and biological truths about sexual embodiment, marriage, and unborn life poison our courts, our culture, and our laws.”
The section on education begins, “The education system is failing our children — from the scourge of woke ideas like critical race theory and radical gender ideology to the lack of academic excellence and transparency.” It goes on to promote school choice — which is usually subsidies for parents who want to send their children to private schools — and issue a call to “reclaim institutions of higher education from the radical Left.”
Also, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts promoted what he calls “Heritage 2.0” at Turning Point USA’s America Fest last Friday. He said it will consist of these policy priorities: “The American Family,” “The Dignity of Work and the Future of Free Enterprise,” “National Security,” and “The American Heritage and Citizenship,” according to The Daily Signal, a conservative outlet. He further praised “the great successes of the Trump-Vance administration.” Donald Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during his presidential campaign, but his administration has implemented many Project 2025 ideas.
However, the Heritage Foundation may be falling apart.
Roberts used the term “Heritage 2.0” in a recent email to staff as well after the recent departure of several key Heritage employees and board members, conservative publication National Reviewreports. National Review headlined its story “The Heritage Foundation Implodes.”
At least a dozen employees left or were fired, Reuters reports. This included almost the entire legal and economic departments, according to National Review.
The sticking point for some was Roberts’s support of podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Carlson hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his show in October, and they expressed “mutual opposition to U.S. support of Israel, a view at odds with that of many conservatives,” Reuters notes. Carlson has said his position is not anti-Semitic. Fuentes, however, has said that “organized Jewry” is undermining white culture, and he has said he admires Adolf Hitler.
Roberts then posted a video saying a “venomous coalition” was attacking Carlson. He later apologized for using that term, which some Jewish people consider anti-Semitic. He also told Heritage staffers he did not support Fuentes but hoped to “convert” some of his acolytes, according to Reuters.
Robert P. George, a prominent legal scholar, left the board after demanding a retraction of Roberts’s video, which was not forthcoming, Politicoreports. Josh Blackman, a staff member who contributed to Project 2025, said in his resignation letter that he left because the video “aligned the Heritage Foundation with the rising tide of antisemitism on the right.”
“A Heritage Foundation that was once synonymous with free markets, the rule of law, and a strong national defense has, to a large extent, abandoned or downgraded those things in pursuit of newer, populist ideological fashions in an apparent finger-in-the-wind attempt to stay in the good graces of the power brokers of the new right,” according to National Review.
Many who’ve left have gone to Advancing American Freedom, founded by former Vice President Mike Pence. National Review calls Advancing American Freedom an “organization that is unbendingly committed to markets, constitutionalism, traditional values, and peace through strength — and has no truck with antisemitism.” However, a glance at its website shows it is just as anti-LGBTQ+ as other right-wing groups, opposing what it calls "gender indoctrination" and more.
Kiki Ball-Change poses outside Stonewall Inn on Feb. 12, 2026.Jack Walker for The Advocate 
Leaders carry the LGBTQ+ Pride flag to be reraised at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. Jack Walker for The Advocate 
Onlookers rally outside Stonewall Inn as a new Pride flag is raised. Jack Walker for The Advocate 
Kellyanne Conway: She moved to Ireland, but she never moved on | Fox News Video 
