DOGE and the Department of Labor

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an announced advisory committee to be led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which plans to focus on (among other things) government spending and waste. That is a laudable objective. One area in which the federal government spends a tremendous amount of money is grants to nonprofits. An analysis of these grants from USASpending.gov provides examples of some of the things that DOGE may wish to examine.

While government efficiency should hopefully be a bipartisan aim, DOGE is specifically associated with the incoming second Trump Administration. Accordingly—and for both recentness and simplicity—this analysis focuses on grants with performance periods that began during the Biden Administration. It pays particular attention to grants that conservative Americans might find ideologically objectionable, as well as those whose usefulness or effectiveness has been questioned or appears questionable. The amounts given refer to the total “obligated amount” according to USASpending.gov, which does not necessarily correspond to the total “outlayed amount” at any given time.

The following are some examples of federal grants made to nonprofits by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Unions and Affiliated Groups

Perhaps unsurprisingly, unions and affiliated charities receive substantial funding from the Department of Labor. For example, the Amalgamated Transit Union was awarded $8 million in 2024 under the registered apprenticeship program, while Communications Workers of America Local 7603 was awarded nearly $2 million in 2023 for job training. In 2022, the department awarded over $5.6 million to a 501(c)(3) affiliate of New York State United Teachers—a state teachers union federation affiliated with both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. The Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO was awarded $500,000 in 2024, while the AFL-CIO’s Working for America Institute was awarded $713,892 in 2023.

One program that funds multiple union-associated groups is the Susan Hardwood Training Grant Program, which has a budget of approximately $12.78 million. It provides grants to nonprofits to conduct training on workplace safety and related topics. The program’s actual effectiveness has been questioned, and the department proposed eliminating it from the budget during the first Trump Administration. Union-affiliated nonprofits that have recently received grants under the Harwood program include the AFSCME Training and Education Institute, the District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund (also an AFSCME affiliate), and the New Jersey State AFL-CIO Community Services Agency.

The most notable union-affiliated nonprofit funded by the Department of Labor is the Solidarity Center (officially the American Center for International Labor Solidarity). It was awarded over $60.2 million worth of cooperative agreements and “other financial assistance” from the department for performance periods beginning from December 2021 through December 2024. Founded in 1997, the Solidarity Center describes itself as an “international worker rights organization partnering directly with workers and their unions, and supporting their struggle for respect, fair wages, better workplaces and a voice in the global economy.” It is legally affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the country, and AFL-CIO president Elizabeth Shuler is the Solidarity Center’s board chair.

The Solidarity Center’s website features much of the left-wing rhetoric common to the institutional Big Labor with which it is affiliated, but that is distinctly at odds with the views of conservative Americans. It operates through what it calls “an analysis and practice of equality, radical inclusion and intersectionality that is explicitly feminist, anti-racist, pro-equality, pro-worker, pro-migrant and class conscious.” It aims to use organized labor to “build a global climate justice movement” and to design “a fair or just transition to a more equitable and sustainable economy.” The Solidarity Center credits its longtime executive director Shawna Bader-Blau with driving the group’s “collective transformation” toward efforts that “more strongly reflect the values of social justice unionism, equality and inclusion, and grassroots democracy.”

Despite being a Big Labor institution, the Solidarity Center is almost exclusively funded by the American taxpayer. Government grants accounted for 99 percent of the group’s total revenue of nearly $72.9 million in 2023. This includes not only funds from the Department of Labor, but also major grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the National Endowment for Democracy (which is itself funded by the U.S. Department of State). The Solidarity Center’s federal funding jumped significantly during the Biden Administration.

Activist Groups

In recent years the Department of Labor has also routed millions of dollars under various grantmaking initiatives to nonprofits that would most accurately be characterized as left-wing activist groups. In some cases, these groups have expressed open hostility to the incoming Trump Administration and the policy priorities it presumably intends to pursue. Some of their views are quite radical.

For example, in 2024 the department awarded $6 million to NextGen Climate America Inc. (which does business as NextGen Policy) for public-sector apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs. NextGen Policy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that fights for what it calls “progressive policy change to address environmental, social, racial, and economic inequities in California through justice-centered legislative advocacy, grassroots partnerships, and democratic civic engagement.” In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, NextGen Policy’s executive director Arnold Sowell Jr. put out a statement on behalf of NextGen California—possibly referring to an affiliated 501(c)(4) called NextGen California Action—in which he declared that the group was “incredibly disheartened” by Trump’s victory and that “clearly, this was not the outcome we hoped for.”

Also in 2024 the department awarded $4 million to UnidosUS, a major left-of-center public policy activist group which has received significant multi-million dollar grants from several federal departments. UnidosUS describes itself as “the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization,” though in practice its activities have a distinct political bent. It blames “conservatives” for exploiting the controversy over critical race theory to further “their concerted efforts to undermine social justice for communities of color,” and it similarly argues that American immigration laws are rooted squarely in racism rather than economic or security considerations. UnidosUS favors strict gun control, supports abortion, and has criticized what it calls “the ravages of racialized policing practices” while signing on to a letter denigrating school resource officers as instruments of the “criminalization, discrimination, and mental and physical harm of our students.” UnidosUS also has a 501(c)(4) sister organization called the UnidosUS Action Fund, with the purpose of furthering the group’s “legislative and electoral efforts.” In 2024, UnidosUS Action Fund endorsed Kamala Harris for president, after having backed Joe Biden in 2020.

The Department of Labor awarded yet another 2024 grant for $750,000 to a transgender advocacy group called the TransLatin@ Coalition, which in 2023 was also awarded $600,000 from the Department of Justice and another $600,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services. The TransLatin@ Coalition’s nearly 100-page Trans Policy Agenda 2024 aims to achieve what it calls “a radical shift in the approach to Trans Liberation.” The agenda defies easy characterization, and readers are encouraged to browse it for themselves. Among numerous other things, it calls for ensuring access to “puberty blockers, [hormone replacement therapy], and in rare cases, gender affirming surgery” for “trans and gender expansive youth,” the decriminalization of various offenses which it calls “survival crimes,” and expansive abortion access in part because “carrying a child creates bodily changes that can cause dysphoria and prohibit trans men from ‘passing.’” It supports abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and calls the total abolition of police an “ideal” outcome, though one it admits is presently unrealistic.

In 2023, the department awarded $1 million to the COPAL Education Fund, whose 501(c)(4) affiliate promotes a broad left-of-center legislative agenda and has announced its opposition to “the dangerous proposals put forth by President-elect Donald Trump.” That same year the department awarded $714,518 to Ada Developers Academy, which works “to prepare women and gender expansive adults to be software developers while advocating for inclusive and equitable work environments” and which aims “to be anti-racist, inclusive, and equitable, with a focus on the impacts of intersectional diversity.” In 2024 the department entered into a $249,900 cooperative agreement with the Center for Law and Social Policy, which believes that “poverty in America is inextricably tied to systemic racism.”

Left-of-center activist groups also receive funding through the Department of Labor’s Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, referenced above. One such group is the 501(c)(3) National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which was awarded $807,624 in Harwood grants from 2021 through 2024. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which consists of nearly 70 activist groups, regularly attacks Republican politicians in the most vicious terms. The group characterized the August 2023 Republican presidential primary debate—which featured DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy—as a “fascist rally.” When Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance as his running mate, the group’s general counsel wrote a blog post calling Vance “reprehensible,” a “menace,” and a “Trump-certified white nationalist,” among other offensive things. After the 2024 elections, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network posted an announcement on its website homepage soliciting funds “to support litigation and organizing efforts against Donald Trump[’s] Xenophobic agenda.”

The nonprofit group CASA received over $1.05 million from the Department of Labor between 2022 and 2024, including $480,000 under the Susan Harwood program. CASA is an all-round left-wing activist group whose agenda promotes a full spectrum of “robust progressive policies.” Other left-of center groups that have received funding through the Susan Harwood program include Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, which was awarded $320,000 under the program for 2023–2024, plus an additional $250,000 through the department’s Women’s Bureau. The Brazilian Worker Center was awarded $775,837 in Susan Harwood grants for performance periods starting between September 2021 and September 2024. The Legal Aid Justice Center was awarded $639,429 over that same time period, while the New Jersey Work Environment Council (affiliated with the BlueGreen Alliance) was awarded $359,000. A full list of 2024 Susan Harwood grant recipients is available here.

Senior Community Service Employment Program

Most of the Department of Labor’s largest nonprofit grantees receive their funding through the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), which has an annual budget of $405 million. The SCSEP subsidizes part-time employment for elderly Americans with family incomes below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. The goal is to transition program participants into unsubsidized jobs once they have developed their skills and experience. It’s certainly not a bad idea, but its effectiveness has been questioned. During the first Trump Administration the department proposed eliminating it from every budget request it made. In FY 2020, for example, the department wrote that “SCSEP has a goal of transitioning half of participants into unsubsidized employment within the first quarter after exiting the program, but has struggled to achieve even this modest goal. Further, these placement rates exclude the nearly one half of program participants who do not complete the program.” DOGE may want to further investigate this program’s efficacy.

The grant numbers involved are certainly large. For instance, more than $190.8 million worth of SCSEP grants were awarded to the AARP Foundation (a 501(c)(3) affiliate of the well-known senior citizens’ advocacy group) for performance periods set to begin between July 2021 and October 2024—well over $40 million annually. Another major SCSEP grantee, the Center for Workforce Inclusion (formerly known as Senior Service America), was awarded $189.5 million over that same period. Though the SCSEP represents by far the largest share, the Center for Workforce Inclusion is funded through multiple federal programs. Combined, government grants accounted for over 99 percent of its annual revenue in 2023. Another nonprofit called the National Council on Aging was awarded nearly $141.5 million under the SCSEP from 2021 through 2024, and government grants have accounted for between approximately 77 and 93 percent of its recent annual revenues. Other major SCSEP grantees include the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging, Goodwill Industries International, Easter Seals, and SER-Jobs for Progress National. A full list of recent SCSEP grantees is available here.

To those who study nonprofit sociopolitical activism, one SCSEP grantee stands out as particularly interesting: the National Urban League. The Department of Labor has awarded it a remarkable $80.3 million worth of grants with performance periods set to begin between July 2021 and October 2024. Nearly $56 million of this was through the SCSEP. The Department of Labor is also not the National Urban League’s only source of federal funding, and in 2023 government grants accounted for 40 percent of its total revenue of $83.4 million.

With a network consisting of many dozens of local affiliates and a history stretching back more than a century, the National Urban League is one of the most well-known civil rights organizations in the country. However, it also takes decidedly left-of-center positions on a wide range of political and public policy issues. It has characterized law enforcement and criminal justice as “a system that has clear links to slavery, Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws [which] now looks like targeted policing, brutality, and mass incarceration.” It praised president Biden’s recent federal death row commutations. It has described voter ID laws as “racially-targeted voter suppression tactics” and attacked objections to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies as “white supremacist.” It has urged the passage of new gun control legislation such as a federal assault weapons ban and called the overturning of Roe v. Wade “horrifying.” It called President Biden’s initiatives during his first 100 days in office “one of the most successful starts to an Administration and Congress in recent memory.”

Indeed, some of the National Urban League’s actions appear to come very close to crossing—if not crossing outright—the legal line prohibiting 501(c)(3) charities from engaging in political campaign intervention. The group’s president and CEO Marc Morial was a featured speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and a presidential candidate comparison published by the group features dramatically different portrayals of the Democratic and Republican tickets. On the one hand, Biden is described as “a vocal advocate for civil rights” and Harris’s career is said to reflect “a steadfast commitment to advancing civil rights and equity.” On the other hand, Trump is said to have “often been criticized for undermining civil rights and social justice efforts” and whose “advocacy and rhetoric has often been criticized as racist.” The group wrote that Trump’s “reputation for enabling racist ideologies” has been “cemented.” It certainly seems difficult to square the National Urban League’s candidate comparison with IRS instructions mandating that 501(c)(3) voter guides “must refrain from judging the candidates or their positions.”

Final Thoughts

These are some examples of grants to nonprofits that DOGE may be interested in examining at the Department of Labor, though this short list is certainly far from exhaustive. For instance, the department sends tens of millions of dollars annually to the International Labor Organization (a United Nations agency). This funding increased significantly during the Biden Administration, and it may be worth scrutinizing.

More broadly, the amount of money that the department has routed to left-of-center interests and activist groups—whose ideological and political views appear so diametrically opposed to the priorities of the Trump Administration and the values of the voters who elected it—deserves attention. Americans are free use their own money to privately support any nonprofit that they wish, in accordance with their own beliefs. It is a rather different situation when that funding comes from tax dollars, however.

Finally, with respect to the federal grants flowing to labor unions and affiliated/associated nonprofits (many of which advocate for public policies that favor organized labor), it is worth remembering that only 10 percent of American workers are union members. In 1983, it was over 20 percent. For private-sector workers, the union membership rate today hovers somewhere around 6 percent. Perhaps the department’s grantmaking could better reflect the reality that working Americans have overwhelmingly chosen not to unionize.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/doge-and-the-department-of-labor/