It's time now for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. This week we're looking at a claim related to Black History Month and Google Calendar. Amid debate over a DEI bill last month on the state House floor, Democratic Rep. Marcia Morey, of Durham, made this claim: "Google caved into Trump. They erased Black History Month from the calendar." Is that true? For more, I'm joined now by Paul Specht, of WRAL.
Marshall Terry: First, let's talk about the bill lawmakers were debating. What does it do, and why did Morey make this claim?
Paul Specht: This bill was introduced on the House floor by Republican state Rep. Brendan Jones, and it would essentially ban state agencies from having any sort of diversity, equity, or inclusion policies or initiatives. Supporters of the bill have said they think that it leads to discrimination instead of preventing discrimination, while opponents have said they think this bill could have a chilling effect of hiring people from minority groups or even talking about the benefits of diversity.
On the floor, Rep. Jones pointed to the rest of the nation and said, Hey, there are other states that are introducing bills like this. There are businesses that are moving away from diversity policies. And so, Morey here is responding to him and saying, Yes, many of these places are capitulating essentially to President Trump.
Terry: So it is true that Google removed Black History Month from its Calendar app? But that's not the only holiday they've removed. And they made the call last year before Trump was elected, right?
Specht: That's right. It's a little confusing because people learned of the change this February after Trump was sworn in. Google released a statement saying this decision was made in mid-2024 — obviously before Donald Trump was back in the White House.
And it's not just about Black History Month. They removed Indigenous People's Month, Pride Month and certain other cultural holidays.
Terry: But did Google actually make some other changes in response to Trump's anti-DEI crusade?
Specht: Yes. So Google has, at times, cited federal government directives by the new Trump administration when making changes to its own policies. For instance, in early February, Google announced that it was going to abandon some of its goals for hiring more people from underrepresented groups. Also, shortly after Trump took office, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Google changed that in its Map app — and they said that's because the Map app is based on some sort of federal government map.
So there have been other times where Google said we're doing this because of a change in federal policy made by the Trump administration. In the case of Google Calendar, they did not say that. They said they needed to simplify the app, and they said they'd gotten too many requests for holidays and cultural observances, and things like that.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim by Rep. Marcia Morey?
Specht: The full claim is Google caved into Trump. They erased Black History Month from the calendar. There is an element of truth here that people should know — and that's that Black History Month is gone from the Google Calendar.
The bigger picture — the blame here, saying that Google caved to Trump — sort of implies that Trump pressured Google, or played some role in its decision to reduce the number of holidays from its Calendar app. And that's not true.
We searched everywhere for stories that might reveal some sort of reporting that the Trump administration pressured Google, and we couldn't find that.
And Google in announcing its change to the calendar didn't cite the federal government. They've done it in the past — they didn't do it in this case. So we rated this claim "mostly false."
