Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI

The Calibri font is the latest government worker to be fired from the Trump administration for 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 “Saturday Night Live” or “South Park”), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has banned the font and ordered diplomats to use Times New Roman for official documents instead, the New York Times reported after obtaining a leaked memo on the topic.

Calibri, which is a sans-serif font, was apparently adopted in 2023 during Biden’s tenure. It was chosen by the department’s then-DEI office, which has since been disbanded under Rubio amid the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives.

The font was chosen in an effort to make documents easier to read for the vision impaired. Sans-serif fonts are those without 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 (although research on how much the serifs themselves impact readability has been inconclusive).

Rubio’s memo has designated Times New Roman as his tenure’s official font, stating it will “restore decorum and professionalism” to documents. Rubio did admit in the memo that Calibri wasn’t the “most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful” example of DEI to his mind’s eye, 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 all the same, that’s a harsh criticism for a font.

Apparently, there were rumblings within the department in 2023 when Calibri was first adopted, the New York Times reported. Font choices inspire the same kind of love/hate passions as sports teams. Everyone has their favorites and their rivalries.

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While Calibri declined to comment to TechCrunch on how woke it actually was, many people 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 our request for comment.