How far did the wokeness mania inside Joe Biden’s White House go? Far enough that his former secretary of State ordered the department to shift typefaces on the basis of diversity and inclusion.
Now, Donald Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is switching it back — and the media somehow thinks that’s the fact they should be mocking, not the fact that Biden’s people switched typefaces because of DEI.
And they wonder why Donald Trump got elected in 2024.
Multiple reports Tuesday confirmed that Secretary of State Rubio ordered the State Department to switch from the font Calibri — a sans-serif font — to Times New Roman, generally considered the default font for serious communication.
The left-leaning media had a field day with this one, as you can tell from the headlines.
The New York Times: “At State Dept., a Typeface Falls Victim in the War Against Woke.” Reuters: “Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri.” The U.K. Guardian: “Font of ‘wasteful’ diversity: Trump’s state department orders return to Times New Roman.”
However, read a bit of the Times’ story and you may begin to agree with Rubio’s assessment of the nonsense.
Mr. Rubio’s directive, under the subject line “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,” served as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to stamp out remnants of diversity initiatives across the federal government.
Then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken ordered the 2023 typeface shift on the recommendation of the State Department’s office of diversity and inclusion, which Mr. Rubio has since abolished. The change was meant to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers. [Emphasis ours.]
Calibri, sometimes described as soft and modern, is typically considered more accessible for people with reading challenges thanks to its simpler shapes and wider spacing, which make its letters easier to distinguish. Mr. Blinken’s move was applauded by accessibility advocates.
So basically, Antony Blinken decided that, in the name of inclusivity, they were going to shift typefaces. Rubio switches back. Who’s the silly one? Ask the media and it’s Rubio.
The latest strike in the Trump administration’s war on “woke”: @SecRubio orders the State Dept. to abandon using the Calibri typeface and to go back to Times New Roman. Blinken had State adopt Calibri since a sans serif typeface is easier for people who have a hard time reading. pic.twitter.com/V2cZNIEKvZ
— Edward Wong (@ewong) December 10, 2025
Everyone else might beg to differ.
“Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence,” Rubio said in the memo.
While he admitted it was “was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of DEIA,” or DEI plus accessibility, he added that reducing the number of “accessibility-based document remediation cases” at the State Department — the goal of the switch, mind you — had not happened.
Meanwhile, serif typefaces are “generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony,” Rubio noted. Which, if you’ve ever spent any time inside Microsoft Word, you know to be factual.
And finally, it’s not until the last two sentences of the Times’ story that it’s noted “the Biden administration’s move to Calibri prompted some grumbling from some traditionalists who preferred Times New Roman. Mr. Blinken also changed the standard font size, from 14-point to 15-point, requiring extra keystrokes that some diplomats found annoying.” So, not only did it look bad, it was also wasteful in other ways, as well.
Beyond that, let this be another reminder of how deep the DEI madness went under the Joe Biden administration: His people literally changed the fonts out of wokeness, even though this didn’t help anyone. Then, when someone sane tries to change them back to the department’s original typeface, they’re the buffoon — according to the same people who bought, before last June’s cataclysmic debate, that all the clips of Biden freezing up were just “cheap fakes.” Remind me again why anyone trusts the media?
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