{"id":210342,"date":"2025-12-10T19:05:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/10\/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T19:05:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:05:02","slug":"marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/10\/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI\u00a0 | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Calibri font is the latest government worker to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.acludc.org\/press-releases\/former-federal-employees-sue-trump-administration-for-first-amendment-violations-and-discrimination\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">fired<\/a> from the Trump administration for its association with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an action that reads like a story from The Onion (and will certainly be fodder for \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d or \u201cSouth Park\u201d), 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/09\/us\/politics\/rubio-state-department-font.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">leaked memo on the topic<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Calibri, which is a sans-serif font, was apparently adopted in 2023 during Biden\u2019s tenure. It was chosen by the department\u2019s then-DEI office, which has since been disbanded under Rubio amid the Trump administration\u2019s anti-DEI directives.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC4612630\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">the serifs themselves impact readability<\/a> has been inconclusive).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rubio\u2019s memo has designated Times New Roman as his tenure\u2019s official font, stating it will \u201crestore decorum and professionalism\u201d to documents. Rubio did admit in the memo that Calibri wasn\u2019t the \u201cmost illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful\u201d example of DEI to his mind\u2019s eye, but he still berated the font for contributing to \u201cthe degradation\u201d of the State Department\u2019s official correspondence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many people across the political spectrum dislike Calibri (according to an informal survey of TechCrunch writers) but all the same, that\u2019s a harsh criticism for a font.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apparently, there were rumblings within the department in 2023 when Calibri was first adopted, the New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/09\/us\/politics\/rubio-state-department-font.html?partner=slack&amp;smid=sl-share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reported<\/a>. Font choices inspire the same kind of love\/hate passions as sports teams. Everyone has their favorites and their rivalries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The State Department did not immediately respond to our request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/12\/10\/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Calibri font is the latest government worker to be fired from the Trump administration for its association with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.\u00a0 In an action that reads like a story from The Onion (and will certainly be fodder for \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d or \u201cSouth Park\u201d), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has banned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":210343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-210342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}