another interview, think this time more detailed, with author of "Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade"

this is interesting tidbit:

But also, the Solidarity Center has been implicated in trying to aid the US government’s attempts to overthrow Hugo Chávez in Venezuela as recently as 2014, for example, and it stepped up involvement in the Middle East after George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. So sometimes the Solidarity Center’s priorities have seemed to mirror or follow the US government’s foreign policy priorities. And again, Solidarity Center is not funded or controlled by workers. It’s funded by the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, and USAID. Right now, Trump and Elon Musk have been dismembering USAID and also putting a stop on the funds that go through NED.

What I’ve heard recently is that Solidarity Center is laying off lots of its staff, furloughing people — basically all but shutting down and maintaining a skeleton crew in its DC headquarters. So what does this mean for the AFL-CIO? The AFL-CIO has been speaking out against a lot of what Musk has been doing to the federal workforce. But it hasn’t been protesting about how this is affecting the Solidarity Center. The fact that Solidarity Center has to basically shut down because of Musk’s attacks on the federal government shows that the Solidarity Center is an arm of the federal government, more so than of the labor movement.