Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity.
While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in official department paperwork.
↫ Michael Crowley and Hamed Aleaziz at The New York Times
US government switches to Times New Roman because Calibri is “woke”
Thom Holwerda
Dec 10, 2025 ·
1 min read
Share this
A new open-weights AI coding model is closing in on proprietary options