Uncle Sam, shareholder: How the Trump administration became part owner of dozens of US companies - Las Vegas Sun News

Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026 | 2 a.m. Editor’s note: “Behind the News” is the product of Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude and Google Gemini. President Donald Trump spent years branding Democrats as socialists — people who would, in his telling, drag America toward state control of commerce and industry. He told reporters his strategy was simple: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country.” [1] He called Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris “Comrade Kamala.” [2] He recently described democratic socialists as “hardcore godless communists” and “the most serious threat to our country since its existence.” [3] And yet, as those words echo through campaign rallies and social media, the Trump administration has quietly — and in some cases, not so quietly — made the U.S. government a co-owner of 39 American companies, investing roughly $26.7 billion in equity and quasi-equity deals. The portfolio spans chipmakers, rare earth miners, quantum computing firms, steel producers and nuclear energy companies.[4] Critics on both the left and the right are asking an obvious question:…