Fact check: NC Democrat blames Trump for Google Calendar’s removal of Black History Month

A North Carolina legislator says President Donald Trump is the reason why one of the world’s largest corporations decided to scrap a Black History Month recognition on its widely used calendar app.

The claim by state Rep. Marcia Morey, D-Durham, came on the House floor as members debated a bill that aims to rid state agencies of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. 

Republican state Rep. Brenden Jones, the bill’s sponsor, said state governments and corporations across the nation were scrapping DEI initiatives. Responding to Jones, Morey said those states and businesses were capitulating to Trump amid a shift in culture.

"Google caved-in to Trump," she said. "They erased Black History Month from the calendar."

Is that right? Although Black History Month is no longer marked on Google Calendar, there appears to be no direct link between that change and Trump’s administration.

In early February, Google announced that it was abandoning its goals of hiring more people from underrepresented groups, citing Trump administration orders that federal government contractors abandon DEI policies. Also in February, media outlets reported that Black History Month, Indigenous Peoples Month, Pride Month and certain holidays no longer showed up on Google Calendar, an online app that allows users to manage their schedules, appointments, and events. 

But in a Feb. 12 statement about changes to Google Calendar, the company didn’t mention Trump or the federal government. It said Google made its decision to "simplify" the calendar in the middle of 2024 as requests mounted for more holiday recognitions.

"Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of moments in a wide number of countries around the world — things like cultural celebrations, teachers days and many more," Google’s statement said.

The statement continued: "We got feedback that many other events and countries were missing, and it just wasn’t feasible to put hundreds of moments in everyone’s calendars — so in mid-2024 we made the decision to simplify and show only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com. Contrary to some of the comments on social media, this was not something we did just this year."

The company said it continues to recognize Black History Month in other ways, such as by promoting Black creators on YouTube.

The company has made other changes directly responding to Trump's directives, however. After Trump issued an executive order renaming the area known as the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America," Google updated its Maps app to reflect the change.

The Google Calendar decision occurred during the 2024 election, as Trump campaigned against diversity policies — promising to target them using executive powers, which he has since done.

By the time media outlets reported on the Google change in February, Trump had become president and had issued an executive order to the federal government to cancel DEI policies. 

Trump’s order didn’t mention Black History Month, but the Defense Intelligence Agency responded to Trump’s action by ordering a pause of all activities and events related to Black History Month and other "special observances" to comply with Trump's executive order, NBC News reported. 

A Google spokesperson didn’t answer our questions about whether its decision was influenced by Trump’s campaign rhetoric; instead she referred us back to the statement from February.

When we asked Morey if she had evidence that Trump pressured Google to remove Black History Month from its calendar, she said her comments about Google caving were more about the influence of anti-DEI culture Trump promotes. 

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"Every one of the actions we take as a legislature exist within a context," Morey said. "Trump did not pressure any company to do anything, but as I said, they are trying to ‘follow what [Trump] has done and the culture shift he is a part of."

She added: "In my opinion, if Google did cave to political pressure from Trump, I doubt they would freely tell reporters that."

PolitiFact NC found no evidence that Trump pressured Google about recognizing Black History Monday on its calendar, specifically. 

We reached out to the White House and asked if Trump had called on Google to remove the holiday from its calendar app.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Trump didn’t remove the holiday from his own calendar. In February, the president ended speculation about his position on the celebration by signing a proclamation recognizing Black History Month and hosting a White House celebration.

Our ruling

Morey said "Google caved in to Trump. They erased Black History Month from the calendar."

Google removed Black History Month and several other holidays from its calendar app, but it did not cite Trump’s influence as a contributing factor. It said it made the decision in the middle of 2024 with the aim of simplifying the app as it managed requests for "hundreds" of holidays. 

It’s possible that Trump’s campaign rhetoric about diversity policies played an indirect role in Google’s decision but Google, which has referenced the administration’s policies for other decisions it has made, did not say so. And Morey produced no evidence that Trump specifically pressured the company about its calendar’s holidays.

We rate her claim Mostly False.