President Donald Trump’s attempts to transform the federal workforce into a tool for the conservative movement — including by trying to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs and his administration’s efforts to convince federal workers to resign — is drawing attention to the deeply consequential Office of Personnel Management.
Wired magazine dropped a report Tuesday highlighting the various associates of X owner Elon Musk who have been tapped to work for the office, which is essentially the human resources department for the federal government.
But one reprehensible figure — OPM’s new general counsel, Andrew Kloster, who in 2023 described himself as a “raging misogynist” in a since-deleted tweet — is starting to garner some attention as well.
On Tuesday, the Project on Government Oversight published a report on Kloster, sounding the alarm on the potential dangers he poses as he offers legal guidance to the federal government.
As the nonpartisan watchdog’s Nick Schwellenbach reports:
“Kloster, who is now responsible for advising the government’s H.R. department, has a long history of racist and sexist online comments and social media posts. In a [2012] response to a post on The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, as reported by The Daily Beast, Kloster wrote, ‘Consent is probably modern society’s most pernicious fetish.’ He also has written online [in 2023] that ‘Slaves owe us reparations.’ In 2023 ... he tweeted, ‘I need a woman who looks like she got punched.’ POGO’s queries sent to OPM and Kloster sought comment on these and other statements; neither addressed these questions.”
But wait, there’s more:
“Kloster is a fierce partisan. While he was working as deputy general counsel at OPM in 2020, the Associated Press reported that ‘Kloster worked as an observer for the Wisconsin Republican Party on election night and was accused of yelling at election workers and police in Green Bay, a claim he disputes.’ He was directly involved in efforts to legally challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election by working for a controversial, taxpayer-funded effort in Wisconsin that ultimately found no widespread fraud. Days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he responded to a tweet raising a scenario that could spark a ‘civil war’ with hand clap emojis between the words ‘Do it.’”
Imagine if you discovered that the HR rep in your workplace had engaged in this kind of deplorable behavior.
(The Project on Government Oversight reported that Kloster responded to only one part of its query, saying that one of the accusations against him was false. POGO said it didn’t include that particular claim in its report and that OPM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Imagine if you discovered that the HR rep in your workplace had engaged in this kind of deplorable behavior. There would be no reason for you to expect this person to operate with the level of sanity and sensibility needed to run a workplace effectively.
And with someone like Kloster in the ranks, it’s no wonder the first week of Trump’s second term has been rife with all sorts of bigoted and dictatorial policy proposals.