Here’s another news story over the weekend that makes us cringe:

The Financial Times reports that the Commerce Department “is planning to inject $1.6bn” and “will receive a 10 per cent stake in USA Rare Earth, a publicly traded Oklahoma-based miner that controls significant US deposits of heavy rare earths, according to people familiar with the matter.”

This trend of the Trump administration investing taxpayer dollars into equity shares of private companies has our hair on fire. Here’s a handful of recent examples:

The Defense Department has even started an “Office of Strategic Capital Investment.” President Dwight Eisenhower is rolling over in his grave.

We would be against politicians picking industry winners and losers, even if they were good at it. We have decades of evidence that what government bureaucrats are VERY GOOD at is picking losers.

Recall the nearly one-half trillion dollars the Obama and Biden administrations flushed down the toilet by “investing” in green energy debacles.

Congress should immediately pass a law making it illegal for the U.S. government to take ownership shares in private companies.