House Committee ‘Keeping a Watchful Eye’ on Labor Department’s Funding of Pro-Union Group Amid ‘Conflict of Interest’ Concerns

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The House Committee on Education & the Workforce is monitoring the relationship between an agency within the Labor Department and the pro-union group the Solidarity Center following a recent Daily Signal report on a potential conflict of interest.

“This report is deeply concerning and calls into question whether there was a significant conflict of interest,” a committee spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “The committee is keeping a watchful eye on this issue as it unfolds.”

Lauren Stewart spent 15 years at the Solidarity Center, a left-leaning nonprofit founded by the AFL-CIO that promotes unions around the world. It also advocates for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and champions “climate justice.”

Stewart joined a subagency of the Labor Department in 2022, and in the years since, that agency awarded the Solidarity Center millions more than it had under previous administrations. A Labor Department official told The Daily Signal that Stewart had been placed on administrative leave in April.

Stewart took a leadership role at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs in April 2022, and after that time, the bureau awarded the Solidarity Center $54.3 million, three times the sum it awarded the group under the first Trump administration ($18.05 million). Stewart went on to serve as acting chief of staff at the bureau.

“The Solidarity Center was originally one of the four core institutes funded through the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy established by President Reagan at a time when Big Labor was vociferously anti-Marxist,” Max Primorac, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told The Daily Signal.

“Unfortunately, like so many foreign aid vehicles funded by the U.S. government, it turned into an instrument of left-wing ideology the rest of the world rejects,” Primorac added.

The Department of Government Efficiency has highlighted many grant programs that send U.S. taxpayer dollars overseas, leading agencies to terminate grants that the Trump administration says put “America last.” The Solidarity Center, which promotes unions across the globe, forms part of the international nongovernmental organization ecosystem DOGE has targeted for deep cuts, most notably at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The bureau canceled nearly $80 million in funding to the Solidarity Center earlier this year, and the center filed a lawsuit in April seeking to restore the funding.

Neither the Solidarity Center nor the Labor Department expounded on what role Stewart had in awarding the grants.

In addition to Stewart, three other former Solidarity Center employees went to work at the Labor Department during the Biden administration, two of them at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs.

The increased grants to the Solidarity Center came as left-wing groups sent their staff and policy proposals into the Biden administration in an influence campaign I describe in “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.” Unions and their allies enjoyed tremendous access to the Labor Department under Biden, and the department issued regulations restricting independent contractors that critics say helped unions at workers’ expense.

Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, a member of the House committee, also commented on the apparent conflict of interest.

“This is exactly the kind of corruption the American people are sick of,” Owens told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday. “President Trump and his administration have done a remarkable job exposing the fraud, waste, and abuse rotting our federal government.”

“House Republicans will keep working to codify these commonsense measures and make sure every taxpayer dollar puts America first,” the congressman added.