Rubio’s Woke War
The Secretary of State is considered the senior advisor to the president. Dean of the cabinet. He is fourth in the line of succession to the presidency. The first Secretary of State was none other than Thomas Jefferson.
The current holder of this key office is Marco Rubio, the 72nd secretary. He used to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate from 2011 to 2025 and has long been a prominent figure in Republican politics. You would think his hands were full. His State Department is grappling with major foreign policy challenges like deterring China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, managing migration pressures from Latin America, the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, negotiating peace efforts in the Middle East, and handling military against Venezuela.
But Rubio, or as Donald Trump used to call him, “Little Marco,” has something else on his mind. Fonts. Specifically, the typeface used by America’s diplomats on documents. Rubio has ordered diplomats to stop using the Calibri font and return to the more traditional Times New Roman.
Against the backdrop of all the crisis the nation is facing, the font edict looks less like a matter of professionalism and more like a symbolic skirmish. A way to score points in domestic culture battles while the department wrestles with urgent global crises.
The story behind the memo is made clear when you consider the order reverses a shift by President Joe Biden’s administration to the less formal typeface that Rubio called wasteful, confusing and unbefitting the dignity of US government documents. In other words, if Biden did it, it must be reversed. We already know Trump is obsessed with Biden. Now we know Rubio shares the syndrome.
Experts say Calibri is modern, clean, and screen-friendly, while Times New Roman is traditional, formal, and optimized for dense print text. The choice between them often depends on whether you want readability on digital displays or a classic, authoritative look in print. So, this is a judgment call.
But more telling, the Biden administration’s decision to switch fonts originated in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office. DEI is the number one boogeyman for the Trump administration. The Biden administration had made the switch because Calibri is generally considered to be more accessible for people with reading challenges due to the font’s simpler shapes and wider spacing, which make its letters easier to distinguish.
“Typography shapes how official documents are perceived in terms of cohesion, professionalism and formality,” Rubio said in a cable sent to all US embassies and consulates abroad. In it, he said the 2023 shift to the sans serif Calibri font emerged from misguided diversity, equity and inclusion policies pursued by his predecessor, Antony Blinken.
Anything that helps people with disabilities access government documents is not on the Trump agenda. Since taking over the State Department in January, Rubio has systematically dismantled DEI programs in line with President Donald Trump’s broader instructions to all federal agencies. Rubio has abolished offices and initiatives that had been created to promote and foster diversity and inclusion, including in Washington and at overseas embassies and consulates, and also ended foreign assistance funding for DEI projects abroad.
“Although switching to Calibri was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of DEI it was nonetheless cosmetic,” according to Rubio’s cable obtained by the Associated Press and first reported by The New York Times.
Americas can rest easy. The world may be going to hell but at least the nation’s chief foreign policy expert has his fonts under control.
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