Trump Shuts National Endowment for Democracy NED which Funds AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center"

Trump’s DOGE Shuts Down National Endowment For Democracy NED Which Funds AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center”
AFL-CIO President Shuler & Leaders Remain Silent About Closure of Their International Operations & Their Labor Crimes

2/13/25
By Steve Zeltzer
WorkWeek

The unilateral action of President Trump to shut all funding of foreign aid to organizations around the world has also shut down the operations of the US funded non-profit National Endowment for Democracy NED. Unlike USAID which is a US government agency. NED is a non-profit which makes it easier to cut off funding The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center is one of the four component organizations of NED and it receives nearly $75 million a year from the NED. In 2019, the NED budget grew to $322 million with the money being shared between Democrat and Republican parties along with the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO and its Solidarity Center.

Reportedly a CIA agent told the Solidarity Center operation in Mexico City it was shut down and 500 employees have been terminated from operations around the world.

Most unionists and workers are unaware that the Solidarity Center which operates in 62 countries has a budget almost as large as the AFL-CIO. It has also been involved in a long history of US supported coups and setting up US corporate style unions that support privatization and the interests of the United States.

For years, rightwing capitalists and fascist billionaires have charged that the NED only supported Democrats and liberals.

The closure of the NED is in fact specifically part of the Trump Project 2025 that was put together by the Heritage Foundation. NED was mentioned as one of the US funded operations that needed to be shuttered.

On December 3, 2024 in James Piereson in an article “The DOGE versus NED reported on the plan of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency at that time led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to zero out the National Endowment for Democracy.

Pierson reports that NED was one of the programs to be cut or reduced in scale and it is at the top of the list. He charges that NED was opposed to the Minsk accords and also had put Democrats in charge of its operations.

He also argued that the NED was outdated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and it also lacked transparency and had millions of dollars that it has wired to organizations around the world with no record of who they were and what the donations were for.

Tthe NED has evolved into a den of never-Trumpers, progressives, and Democrats who have said that President-elect Trump is an “authoritarian” or a “fascist” who will end America’s constitutional order. This is in keeping with the NED’s vision of democracy, which rules out popular movements led by the likes of Donald Trump.”

This open appeal for a fascist insurrectionist popular movement led by Trump exposes the deep split in the capitalist class. Trump, Musk, Theil and his techno fascist supporters are not interested in giving the facade of democracy in the US. They also are opposed to the AFL-CIO which has been a major supporter and funder of the Democratic party nationally.

The AFL-CIO’s “Solidarity Center” since its foundation has been an appendage to the US government operations and its closure by Trump will again raise questions about the nature of the “Solidarity Center” and it’s real history and role in global labor.

AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler was previously on the board of the NED and is now on the board of the Solidarity Center.

The AFL-CIO leadership has a long history of supporting bloody US military coups including in Chile in 1973 where over 10,000 trade unionists were murdered with the direct support of the AFL-CIO funded by the CIA., The AFL-CIO International Affairs Department was exposed during the Frank Church Congressional hearings and the supporters of this work including former CWA president Joe Beirne who turned over an education center of the CWA to the training of agents for the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

The role of the CIA and AFL-CIO is extensive and is connected to the founding of the AFL-CIO during the middle of the McCarthy witch hunts.

These witch hunts were aimed particularly at leftists, socialists and communists particularly from the CIO who had built mass unions during the 1930’s.

Jay Lovestone, a former member of the US Communist Party, had become an anti-communist and was with the ILGWU in New York. He worked with AFL-CIO president George Meany and the CIA and also brought Irving Brown and Tom Kahn into the AFL-CIO to intervene internationally against left unions around the world. Brown with CIA funds set up pro-capitalist unions throughout Europe and in other countries including Turkey.

The AFL-CIO was also actively involved in supporting the overthrow of Allende in Chile in 1973 and coups in Brazil, Argentina and many other countries. None of this has been reported by the AFL-CIO leadership to the membership.

The AFL-CIO and particularly AFT president Randi Weingarten was also actively involved in supporting Ukrainian unionists who supported Oligarchs who wanted to privatize the mines and other public property in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She visited in 2014 and her role in Ukraine has been actively supported by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

The Solidarity Center was actively seeking to fund the overthrow of the Ukrainian government even before 2014.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, US capitalists including Goldman Sachs wanted to use the collapse to privatize and seize the mines and farmlands of Ukraine which they have done. Now Trump is demanding US capitalist control of lithium and rare earths in order to continue to get military support from the US.

More than $6 billion dollars was funneled to USAID and the Solidarity Center for its political organizing in the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The “Solidarity Center” set up classes on how to have a US business style union that supports capitalism paid for by the US government.

Weingarten is also one of the biggest supporters of the NED and the Solidarity Center and she even joined with John McCain in urging the overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovych government.
She also defended the government’s policy of resurrecting the role of Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis who were involved in anti-semitic and war crimes fascism. The government of Ukraine has also changed the names of streets to honor national fascists as national heroes.

Over $5 billion dollars from USAID and NED was also used to finance organizations in Ukraine including rightwing unions and pro-capitalist union officials who were opposed to the government. One of these was Mykhailo Volynets of the KVUP.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/10/the-afl-cios-nazi-friendly-union-in-ukraine/


The AFL-CIO top officials have also had a long collaboration not only with the CIA but the Zionist racist Israeli Histadrut corporate trade union federation.

Golda Mier’s statue is even in the headquarters of the AFL-CIO where she is acclaimed as a supporter of the Zionist state. Her statement that “There is no such thing as Palestinians” was the position of the Zionists as they engaged in mass deportations and pogroms against Palestinian workers and people of Palestine.

George Meany and the leadership of the AFL-CIO even before the formation of Israel were in support of a Zionist state and supporting Histadrut which was formed in 1920 to organize the so-called Zionist conquest of labor, which aimed to exclude Palestinian workers from the economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VioS5r1SAw

The Solidarity Center even trained its agents at the Histadrut headquarters in Israel on how to conduct subversion operations around the world.

The Histadrut during its formation organized boycotts against Arab labor and also collaborated to support the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The Histadrut which owned Iskoor, an industrial conglomerate, was actively involved in arming and supporting the apartheid regime when there was an international boycott.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/histadrut-israels-racist-trade-union/8121

The AFL-CIO leadership worked with the CIA in collaboration with the Histadrut and helped support the pro-regime bantustan leader Buthelezi The AFL-CIO gave more than $1 million to Buthelezi. This money which came directly from the CIA was used to organize and train thugs by Buthelezi. This training was done in South Africa occupied Namibia. They then went back to South Africa where they assaulted and murdered trade unionists and their families who were organizing in Kwazulu Natal province.
https://mg.co.za/article/1998-10-30-buthelezi-roasted-for-kzn-atrocities/

The AFL-CIO also gave the George Meany award to Zulu chief Buthelezi. The hidden history of the Histadrut is completely tied to collaboration with the US government in its international operations around the world.


One of the most important major operations of the Solidarity Center is supposedly to bring democracy to the Mexican working class and unions. The funding has millions of dollars as well from the USAID and the State Department with grants of over nearly $300 million for running elections and also setting up labor studies programs in Mexico.

This is significant because the budget of the now closed NLRB in 2024 was $299.2 million. The unions that the Solidarity Center supports and helps to build are ideologically similar to the AFL-CIO business unions. None of these unions have challenged the mass privatization of the resources of Mexico, While funding labor centers and paying for union elections and supervising them there have been charges of a lack of democracy by rank and file members.

When 70,000 farmworkers in Baja, California went on strike and started a boycott against the Driscoll corporation which paid subcontractors $7 a day there was complete silence by the Solidarity Center.

At the same time there is virtually no funding of labor studies programs in the United States by the US government. The Solidarity Center has partnered with their Mexican unions that they are supporting and of course there is no discussion or presentations on the role of US imperialism in Mexico.

The AFL-CIO and Trumpka have supported the USMCA passed by Trump during his first term which allowed for further economic penetration of US economic interests in Mexico. The AFL-CIO argued it was a major victory since it allowed US unions to challenge undemocratic labor practices in Mexico.

Under NAFTA, Mexico privatized the ejidos which were nationalized farm lands for peasants, telecom, the mines and the rail system. The privatization of Mexico including energy, public education and housing has of course been devastating to the poor and working class.

One organization that has welcomed the new role in Mexico by the Solidarity Center is Labor Notes. In an article “How Can U.S. and Mexican Workers Build Cross-Border Solidarity?” authors Henry Salazar and David Bacon argued that working with the solidarity center in Mexico was helping the working class. While Labor Notes has lauded this work, the workers at the GM Silao plant that actually organized a rank and file union were left out of the plant when the union leadership supported by Labor Notes signed a contract without them getting their jobs back. The use of funding to support business unionists is a pattern of the intervention of the Solidarity Center not only in Mexico but around the world.
https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2024/12/how-can-us-and-mexican-workers-build-cross-border-solidarity

Labor Notes also invited Solidarity Center staffers, some of whom are members of OPEIU 2 in Washington DC to participate in workshops at the Labor Notes convention and also helped fund the international delegations.

One of the parts of the history that the AFL-CIO sponsored labor conferences have never broached is the history of the AFL-CIO in Mexico. In 1980, the CIA working with the AFL-CIO hired a couple of hundred thugs to physically assault the Ford assembly plant to remove a militant leadership. One worker was killed and others were injured. This intervention and cover-up was revealed by former UAW 879 president Rob McKenzie in his book El Golpe: US Labor, And The Coup at Ford in Mexico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkFnhfZy3Gk

The AFL-CIO of course has never apologized and offered to compensate the workers and their families in Mexico City who were injured and killed by this criminal gangster attack. They have also refused to provide an account of this attack to UAW and AFL-CIO members and workers in the United States.

The closure of the Solidarity Center by Trump raises the question of what kind of solidarity should workers and unions in the United States conduct. Should it be funded by the US government which supports business unionism or should there be direct worker to worker with the unions and rank and file of the United States with workers in the US?

One of the critical issues now in front of the working class is the tariff trade wars being proposed by Trump that could lead to tariffs of 25% on both Canada and Mexico. This would be devastating to workers in all three countries yet the UAW president Shawn Fein has offered to work with union buster and racist Trump to support this trade war.

The growing tariff trade war is the natural development of the decline of US imperialism and its inability to compete with China and other growing economic competitors. Both the Democrats and Republicans supported NAFTA and the deindustrialization of the United States for greater profits for US corporations.

UAW president Shawn Fein instead of proposing a united front of auto workers from Canada and Mexico joining together with US workers against the tariffs is now joining with Trump who wants to pit US workers against workers around the world.

Even the auto companies including Ford are warning that this growing tariff trade war and attacks on EV’s will lead to UAW member layoffs and cutbacks.

The silence by the AFL-CIO about the shutdown of their “Solidarity Center” funded almost entirely by the US government through the NED is another example of the compromised position of the AFL-CIO leadership. The role of the AFL-CIO as an appendage of the operations of the US government and the closure of their whole international operations shows again the nature of their so-called “international” solidarity.

They have also refused to mobilize and educate workers about the role of Project 2025 and its fascist program and have led no national campaign against privatization and have totally relied on electing Democrats to defend the working class.

The rise of a fascist movement and a fascist government has now thrown them into deep crisis and understanding the role of their international operations is connected to their role in refusing to fight the bosses and capitalists here in the United States.

The AFL-CIO president Schuler and former presidents including Trumka and Sweeney have refused to have any serious debate in the AFL-CIO this record and also opening the books of the AFL-CIO to their extensive relationship with the CIA that helped jail and murder tens of thousands of workers around the world. The shutdown of the Solidarity Center now provides an opportunity to raise these issues within the AFL-CIO and AFL-CIO affiliated unions to hold the organization’s leadership accountable for their labor crimes.

By Steve Zeltzer
WorkWeek
labormedia1 [at] gmail.com