Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

As pitiful as the last guy, apparently? As the article says, the decision to switch to Calibri in the first place came directly from Blinken. (I try not to get into anti-anti-Trump discourse, but getting worked up about fonts seems counterproductive to me.)

Neither of these decisions likely originated with the SoS themselves. I say the reasoning matters, though.

You can try to avoid the discourse, but if you're American then you're in it. This administration is destroying the country for many reasons: profit, hatred of democracy, racism, control. And FWIW, it's the current administration foaming at the mouth about a font change, not the last one.

In this case, the decision is solely because the last guy did something and they can't let anything from the last administration stand.

Let's say, in an alternate universe where Rubio's department genuinely thought there were cost or coordination issues with Calibri. They could have reversed the decision and cited that. But no: Making a font that is more compatible with screen reader technology is woke. Their words, not mine.

"Woke" is not, in fact, their words. The source article doesn't quote Rubio as saying "woke". The NY Times coverage (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/us/politics/rubio-state-d...) goes into a lot more detail than Reuters, as is typical; they don't publish the full text of the order (IIUC this is common to protect sources), but they say Rubio cited a number of coordination and messaging issues, along with a metric of document accessibility requests which he says did not decrease in the Calibri era.

Again, I say this not to nitpick or to dispute that it's kinda silly, but to emphasize that this is a provocation you shouldn't and don't need to rise to. The State Department's font choices do not matter, and it will not hurt anyone nor create a bad permission structure if they use Times New Roman. The only possible way this story could become even a tiny bit consequential is if Democrats take the bait and radicalize against serifs.

Except that last guy was not pitiful about and did not had any ideological hateful proclamations.

It was choice for slightly better readability on screens. Plus that font was default in word. There were not emotional claims about it.

It is entirely valid to make fun of Rubio.

> Let's say, in an alternate universe where Rubio's department genuinely thought there were cost or coordination issues with Calibri. They could have reversed the decision and cited that.

So apparently Daring Fireball (of all places) got their hands on the full memo text[1]. And in all of the text, there are 2 sentences total that refer to DEI at all, the rest of it is talking about those coordination and cost issues. So I guess they did do that, they just also had to take their shots at DEI because why be in politics these days if you can't virtue signal even the most standard of decisions.

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department-ret...

Fair point that they didn't say the word woke. I'll own that criticism.

I will assert that any justification for this that could be seen as legitimate is wiped away when they write anything about "Calibri is DEI" when there were valid reasons to consider it.

And believe me, I am well aware of where this ranks in the list of sins of the administration. It's a very small, very petty action in line with their broader ethos.

They definitely did use the term 'DEI', though, which is pretty much interchangeable as far as they're concerned.