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It’s a familiar Washington story: government agencies that just can’t seem to get on the same page. In this instance, quite literally.

Earlier this week, a memo from Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN directed all department personnel in the agency’s Foggy Bottom headquarters and posts around the world to use Calibri, a large sans-serif font, for all official documents. His deadline: Feb. 6.

“The Times (New Roman) are a-Changing,” the cable was titled.

The change, a spokesperson for the State Department said, was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion as a way to make the print easier to read for people who use screen readers or other assistive technologies. It grew out of the agency’s iCount campaign last year, an effort to create a more inclusive workplace for employees with disabilities.

“As we laid out in the cable — Times New Roman have ‘wings’ and ‘feet’ — more commonly known as serifs,” the spokesperson said. “These angular features on the text can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities – including those who may use optical character recognition or screen readers. Calibri has no wings and feet and is the default font in many software products.”

Funny enough, Microsoft established Calibri as its default font back in 2007. But the company said in 2021 that it would be phasing it out in favor of a new, to be determined custom sans serif font.

The new directive, first reported by the Washington Post’s State Department correspondent JOHN HUDSON, clarifies a couple things. First of all, some people are really obsessed with fonts (like the anonymous foreign service officers who complained to Hudson about the aesthetics of Calibri). Secondly, there appears to be no consistency across the executive branch or any formal administration guidance on the matter.

The White House — inexplicably, we believe — uses Courier New for presidential actions: memoranda proclamations, directives, executive orders. For letters, they go with Times New Roman.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, all official letters and memos must be typed in 12-point Times New Roman, according to its correspondence manual. But the agency plans to update the manual this year, and has had preliminary discussions about reviewing its font, a spokesperson said. That appears more than a little overdue. The current directive dates from February 1997 and included a note for users of WordPerfect 5.0/5.1 that 10-pitch Courier was also acceptable, although that option was struck in 2007.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Graphics Standards Guide specifies that Myriad Pro is the default font for all text, with Calibri as the back-up. All titles, the guide states, should be in Georgia: “This elegant serif font provides contrast to the general sans serif body text, and conveys a modern yet traditional look and feel.”

The exhaustive Style Guide for the Department of Agriculture includes a clear directive for staff: “Use only Times New Roman 12-point typeface.”

No executive agency, sadly, has chosen to go truly bold and conduct all official business in comic sans.

While disability rights advocates applauded the State Department's effort, they bristled at the comments unnamed department officials made to Hudson lamenting that Calibri is such a humdrum, hardly iconic font (not that anyone expects government communiques to be written in Helvetica, the typeface of the New York City subway, or Gotham, a font deployed to great effect in President BARACK OBAMA’s campaign signage).

“Aesthetics are frequently weaponized against accessibility,” said MARIA TOWN, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “We have seen entities resist constructing ramps or adding railings to buildings because of concerns that it would disrupt the aesthetics of an entrance. These same dynamics play out in the presentation and delivery of information.”

Town said she hopes the State Department effort to make their documents more accessible "is accompanied by other work to increase information accessibility, such as compliance with section 508 for all State Department websites and documents and more frequent use of plain language.”

Such changes are no small matter, said JOEY HUNZIKER, the director of leadership and organizing at the National Center for Learning Disabilities. “It might not be aesthetically pleasing to some, but if it's making life easier for disabled workers then we should be moving in that direction.”

MESSAGE US —Are you a font obsessive? Do you have thoughts on which one would be best for the Biden administration? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at [email protected]

This one is from reader ERIC DENHOFF. Which U.S. president permanently wrecked his back while planting a tree with a Canadian prime minister?

(Answer at the bottom.)

TGIF! It’s cartoon feature time. This one is by SCOTT STANTIS. Our very own MATT WUERKER publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country. View the cartoon carousel here.

DUAL ANNIVERSARIES: President JOE BIDEN issued a proclamation Friday marking the 50th anniversary of the historic — and now overturned — decision in Roe v. Wade, signaling his ongoing commitment to the cause of women’s reproductive freedom. But on social media, the president and aides were mostly focused on another anniversary: their own.

Exactly two years since Biden was inaugurated, the White House dropped a sizzle reel highlighting its accomplishments and another video showing Biden and Vice President KAMALA HARRIS touting the progress they’ve made. Meanwhile, chief of staff RON KLAIN tweeted out every last talking point, boosted a JOE SCARBOROUGH monologue from the MSNBC host’s show Friday, congratulatory tweets from allies and, according to NBC’s MIKE MEMOLI, served cake to the whole staff.

NOW CAUSING A WILMINGTON OF TROUBLE: CNN’s ARLETTE SAENZ, KEVIN LIPTAK, MAEGAN VAZQUEZ and MARSHALL COHEN deep dive into the security of the president’s Wilmington, Del., home throughout his time in office, how it’s evolved from his days as a senator and how it changed when he became vice president and, eventually, president. Read more here.

RELATED: NYT’s MICHAEL D. SHEAR, PETER BAKER and KATIE ROGERS report on why the White House stayed silent about the document findings before the public revelation. It came down to an ultimately ill-fated gamble, they write, by Biden’s small circle of top aides who thought that by cooperating "without going public, they could convince the Justice Department that the matter was little more than a minor, good-faith mistake.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by our MERIDITH MCGRAW about DONALD TRUMP’s warning to Republican lawmakers to leave Medicare or Social Security alone in the debt ceiling fight: “Republicans have vowed not to raise the federal government’s borrowing capacity unless Biden makes steep cuts to federal spending, potentially impacting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s video is a warning to his fellow party members not to go there.”

Biden senior adviser and staff secretary NEERA TANDEN retweeted the piece Friday. 

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This take from JONATHAN ALTER for NYT about the political impact of Biden’s document discoveries: “Most Democrats still think Mr. Biden is honest, and they view his accomplishments on the economy, climate, infrastructure and defending democracy as far more significant than this lapse. But it’s hard to exaggerate the level of Democratic exasperation with him for squandering a huge political advantage on the Mar-a-Lago story and for muddying what may have been the best chance to convict Mr. Trump on federal charges.”

NH DEMS PUT BIDEN ON BLAST (CONT.): In the latest Playbook Deep Dive episode, our RYAN LIZZA spoke with the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, RAY BUCKLEY, about the Biden administration’s efforts to reshuffle the primary calendar — something New Hampsherians aren’t too thrilled about. (West Wing Playbook wrote about the issue in Tuesday’s edition.)

FOURTH BYLINE, BUT FIRST IN THEIR HEARTS: We noticed MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” put up a fullscreen graphic of a story by our White House and Congress reporters about Biden world’s giddiness over some of the House GOP’s more, uh, extreme members being named to the Oversight Committee. We also noticed that three of the four authors’ names were abbreviated, while only the fourth person on the byline got their last name spelled out. You’d think he works there or something.

PERSONNEL MOVES: MIA EHRENBERG has joined the Department of Homeland Security as a press secretary, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She most recently was communications director for former Rep. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY (D-N.Y.) and is also a NANCY PELOSI alum.

A MESSAGE FROM MURIEL: Washington, D.C. Mayor MURIEL BOWSER is asking federal government workers to return to the office — to help revitalize a downtown filled with vacant work spaces due to Covid and teleworking, MICHAEL SCHAFFER reports for POLITICO Magazine.

Bowser has a delicate dance ahead, asking the president to help revamp the nation’s capital with a return-to-office policy, while also counting on him to wield his veto power should the Republican House target the city legislatively. She’s also asking the bosses of her constituents to get physically back to the office despite some preferring the remote work lifestyle.

All the U.S. presidents who played golf, including Joe Biden, Donald Trump (Golfweek’s Todd Kelly)

White House Aims to Reflect the Environment in Economic Data (NYT’s Lydia DePillis)

CIA director briefed Zelensky on US expectations for Russia’s battlefield planning (CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand and Kylie Atwood)

It seems like WENDY SHERMAN, Biden’s deputy secretary of state, endured various injuries when she worked for the Obama administration as the State Department’s third-ranking official.

We previously noted that she hurt her finger during the 2015 Iran nuclear talks, but she also broke her nose while on the way to a call with then-Secretary of State JOHN KERRY.

“The guys who were around me said, ‘Call an ambulance.’ I said, ‘No … none of you are clearly moms — just get me an ice pack,’” she told CNN’s JESSIE GRETENER in 2018.

She added that her male counterparts “would have been in the hospital for days” recovering from such an injury. Probably true.

JOHN F. KENNEDY hurt his back when planting a tree to commemorate his visit to Canada with Prime Minister JOHN DIEFENBAKER. Kennedy reaggravated an injury and endured back pain he would grapple with for most of his adult life, according to a 2017 entry in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.