The Calibri font has become the latest government worker to be fired from the Trump administration due to its association with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. In an action that reads like a story from The Onion and will certainly be fodder for shows like “Saturday Night Live,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has banned the font. He has ordered diplomats to use Times New Roman for official documents instead, according to a New York Times report on a leaked memo.
Calibri, a sans-serif font, was adopted in 2023 during the Biden administration. It was chosen by the State Department’s then-DEI office, which has since been disbanded under Rubio amid the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives. The font was selected in an effort to make documents easier to read for the vision impaired. Sans-serif fonts lack decorative swirls and lines at the ends of letters. With their cleaner lines and slightly wider letter spacing, they are considered more accessible for people with issues ranging from dyslexia to low vision, though research on the impact of serifs themselves has been inconclusive.
Rubio’s memo designates Times New Roman as the official font for his tenure, stating it will “restore decorum and professionalism” to documents. Rubio did admit that Calibri wasn’t the “most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful” example of DEI in his view, but he still berated the font for contributing to “the degradation” of the State Department’s official correspondence.
Many people across the political spectrum dislike Calibri, according to an informal survey of TechCrunch writers, but that is a harsh criticism for a font. There were reportedly rumblings within the department when Calibri was first adopted in 2023. Font choices inspire the same kind of love-hate passions as sports teams, with everyone having their favorites and rivalries.
While Calibri declined to comment to TechCrunch on how woke it actually was, many would agree that Times New Roman is a particularly old-timey font. Even the New York Times stopped using it almost two decades ago. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.