Thirteen days after The Oklahoma Post submitted written questions to USA Rare Earth asking how many people actually work at its Stillwater facility, the company answered the question in a press release.
On March 26, 2026, USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) announced the commissioning of Phase 1a of its commercial magnet production line at 100 W. Airport Road, stating the facility is operated by “more than 100 employees.” The announcement came five days before the March 31, 2026 deadline specified in the city’s Tax Increment Financing agreement, under which the company received $7 million in public funds tied to employment commitments made in June 2022.
The Oklahoma Post sent written questions to USAR’s media relations contact at Teneo on March 13, 2026, asking for current employee counts, projected hiring through the March 31 deadline and confirmation or denial of reports that the company was considering relocating Stillwater operations to Houston, Texas. The company did not respond.
In June 2022, USA Rare Earth announced it would create at least 100 jobs at the Stillwater facility with median wages around $60,000, generating $6.6 million in annual payroll. Production was to begin in 2023. The announcement drew a press conference appearance from Gov. Kevin Stitt, who called it “a once-in-a-generation announcement.” Mayor Will Joyce called it “a win for Stillwater, and a win for Oklahoma.”
The city of Stillwater, acting through the Stillwater Economic Development Authority, approved $7 million in Tax Increment Financing secured by a first lien on the property. The state of Oklahoma contributed $1.2 million from the Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund, disbursed in two installments tied to renovation spending milestones. The state also enrolled the company in the Quality Jobs Program, which provides cash rebates of up to 5% of qualifying payroll for 10 years, potentially worth $2.8 million if employment thresholds are met.
Production did not begin in 2023.
The March 26 press release says Phase 1a has been commissioned and that customer orders for sintered neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets can begin to be filled in the second quarter of 2026. The company says Phase 1a is expected to reach a production run rate of 600 metric tons per year by end of the fourth quarter of 2026. A second production line, Phase 1b, is projected to bring total Stillwater capacity to 1,200 metric tons annually by the first quarter of 2027.
The press release states the process is “managed from start to finish by the more than 100 employees of USAR’s Stillwater facility.”
That sentence answers, at minimum in part, the questions this publication submitted two weeks prior and received no response to. Whether those employees are full-time Stillwater residents, contractors or relocated personnel remains unaddressed by the company.
Three days before the Phase 1a announcement, on March 23, USAR announced a mutual sales and distribution agreement with Arnold Magnetic Technologies, a Rochester, New York-based subsidiary of Compass Diversified (NYSE: CODI) with more than 130 years in precision magnet manufacturing. Under the non-exclusive deal, each company can sell and distribute the other’s products, pairing USAR’s neodymium feedstock with Arnold’s finished precision magnets for aerospace, defense and semiconductor customers.
The deal arrived amid growing congressional scrutiny of the federal government’s financial involvement with USAR. The U.S. Department of Commerce announced a non-binding letter of intent to provide up to $277 million in direct funding and up to $1.3 billion in a senior secured loan to USAR under the CHIPS and Science Act to support projects in Texas and Oklahoma.
On March 19, 2026, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., ranking member on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick condemning the proposed deal. Lofgren’s letter focused on two specific provisions disclosed by USAR in its own SEC filings: first, that the Department of Commerce would retain its full equity stake in the company even if the federal government later backs out of the deal and withdraws its entire investment; second, that one of the department’s conditions for finalizing the agreement was that USAR execute a private capital raise to be led by Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm formerly controlled by Lutnick and now controlled by his sons.
“How can such a lopsided power imbalance between government and private sector possibly be justified, wherein a company lies at the mercy of the Secretary of Commerce while simultaneously doing business with his sons? It cannot,” Lofgren wrote. She described the USAR deal as one of at least 10 federal equity stake agreements the Trump administration has reached with private companies since July 2025, writing that such arrangements “distort the free market, warp capital investments, provide preferential treatment to certain favored companies, and open new avenues for corruption.”
The conflict of interest questions surrounding Lutnick and the USAR agreement do not exist in a vacuum. Lutnick is simultaneously one of the most scrutinized figures in the ongoing congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Lutnick and Epstein were next-door neighbors on East 71st Street in Manhattan, and Lutnick later purchased a property that had previously passed through Epstein’s hands. In public statements, Lutnick claimed he cut off all contact with Epstein in 2005 after touring his townhouse and seeing a massage room. The Epstein files tell a different story.
Documents released by the Justice Department show that in 2012, Lutnick and Epstein co-invested in a digital advertising technology company called AdFin, four years after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor. Emails in the files show Lutnick communicating with Epstein about AdFin as late as May 2018, the year before Epstein died in federal custody.
Under questioning before a Senate subcommittee in February 2026, Lutnick acknowledged visiting Epstein’s private island in 2012 during a family vacation, contradicting his earlier public statements. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told Lutnick directly: “The issue is not that you engaged in any wrongdoing in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, but that you totally misrepresented the extent of your relationship with him to the Congress, to the American people, and to the survivors of his despicable criminal and predatory acts.”
Calls for Lutnick’s resignation have grown, with Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., among those publicly demanding he step down. On March 10, 2026, Democracy Defenders Fund and Public Citizen jointly called for his resignation, citing his inconsistent statements about Epstein, an FBI whistleblower complaint alleging financial misconduct at Cantor Fitzgerald and ethical violations in his current role.
The White House has stood by Lutnick. Lutnick has denied wrongdoing.
It is this man who Rep. Lofgren says is at the center of the USAR conflict of interest, with his sons’ firm positioned to profit from the same federal deal his department is negotiating with an Oklahoma company that has yet to produce revenue. The Commerce Department has not publicly responded to Lofgren’s letter.
Buried in USAR’s own forward-looking statements boilerplate is language the company is legally required to include: “substantial doubt regarding the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern for the twelve months following the issuance of its third quarter 2025 Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements.”
That language means the company’s own auditors are not certain it will survive the next 12 months. It does not mean the company will fail. It does mean that $8.2 million in Stillwater and Oklahoma taxpayer commitments remain exposed to a company that has not yet produced revenue.
The company’s earnings report is scheduled for March 30, 2026.
The most authoritative public source for the TIF agreement’s terms is USA Rare Earth’s Form 10-K for fiscal year 2024, filed March 31, 2025 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On June 6, 2022, USA Rare Earth LLC executed the TIF Agreement with the Stillwater Economic Development Authority (SEDA), a public trust with the City of Stillwater as its beneficiary. The Stillwater City Council approved the deal while acting in its capacity as SEDA’s governing body.
The agreement provides $7.0 million in “Upfront Assistance” for facility development, secured by a first lien on the property at 100 West Airport Road—a 310,000-square-foot MINING.COMGlassdoor former Total Energy building the company purchased for $9.9 million in cash. Because USA Rare Earth bought the building outright with no mortgage, the city’s lien holds first position, functioning much like a mortgage that allows SEDA to foreclose and take possession if the company defaults.
The SEC filing specifies two layers of tax benefits beyond the cash. First, the TIF made the company eligible for a five-year manufacturing and R&D ad valorem tax exemption, which has been active since 2023. Second, after that exemption expires, SEDA must disburse to the company 90% of the incremental ad valorem taxes generated by taxes assessed against the facility and paid by the company a benefit that could extend for years and be worth several million additional dollars.
In exchange, the company committed to investing approximately $140 million total: $9.9 million in land and building acquisition, $17 million in immediate construction, and $113 million in additional improvements and equipment. The company must also “employ a specified number of employees at specified levels of median compensation at various stages of the development“— language that deliberately avoids disclosing exact numbers in the public filing.
The 10-K states the company “agreed to commence certain phases of the development of the Stillwater Facility by no later than March 31, 2026” and to “complete that advanced development by no later than June 30, 2027.” Both deadlines come with critical caveats: the first is “subject to agreed extensions” and the second is “subject to certain exceptions.” These escape clauses, as The Oklahoma Post has noted, “potentially give the company significant flexibility.”
Whether 100 jobs must be achieved by March 31, 2026 specifically cannot be confirmed from public records. The original June 9, 2022 announcement—a press conference featuring Governor Kevin Stitt and Mayor Will Joyce—promised “at least 100 new jobs with median wages around $60,000,”generating approximately $6.6 million in annual payroll. That 100-job figure is documented across multiple sources as the headline employment commitment. However, the SEC filing’s reference to employment requirements “at various stages of the development” suggests the milestones may be phased, with different job counts tied to each deadline. The state’s separate $1.2 million Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund agreement explicitly requires $50 million in investment and 100 new jobs for the company to avoid repayment, but this is a distinct agreement from the city’s TIF.
The full TIF agreement text, which would resolve these ambiguities, has never been released publicly. The Oklahoma Post filed a public records request in May 2025 for deal specifics; Mayor Joyce reportedly refused to provide the records.
The SEC filing states that if USA Rare Earth defaults on its obligations, and “after certain notice, cure periods and possible exceptions,” SEDA “may terminate the TIF Agreement and could make demand for immediate repayment in full of the Upfront Assistance” the full $7.0 million. The language is permissive (“may,” “could”) rather than mandatory, and the multiple layers of notice, cure periods, and possible exceptions create substantial room for negotiation before any clawback would be triggered.
The state-level clawback is more straightforward. The Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund agreement, executed April 15, 2022 and restated July 1, 2024, disbursed $1.2 million in two $600,000 installments when the company reached $1 million and $2 million in qualifying renovation costs. Edgar-online The full amount was received by April 6, 2023 Repayment is required if the company fails to invest over $50 million and create at least 100 jobs at specified wages.
The Oklahoma Post has argued that clawbacks are “almost never enforced” because municipalities and states “hate admitting they made bad bets”—a characterization that, while editorial, reflects a widely documented pattern in economic development incentive enforcement nationally.
USA Rare Earth is enrolled in the Oklahoma Quality Jobs Program, which provides up to 5% of qualifying payroll as cash rebates for up to 10 years. The Oklahoma Post estimates this could be worth approximately $2.8 million if the company achieves 100 jobs at $60,000+ median wages The ($6.6M payroll × 5% × ~8.5 qualifying years). Under the program’s general requirements, companies must achieve an average wage threshold and $2.5 million in new annual payrolls within three years of enrollment to qualify for extended benefits. Companies must also offer basic health insurance to employees within 180 days, with employees paying no more than 50% of premiums. Claims are filed quarterly for three years, and if thresholds are met, the program extends for an additional seven years.
Unlike the TIF and Closing Fund agreements, the Quality Jobs Program is self-executing in one direction: if the company doesn’t create qualifying jobs, it simply doesn’t receive the rebates. There is no separate clawback mechanism for Quality Jobs payments already received.
On the exact date of this research and precisely five days before the TIF’s first contractual deadline USA Rare Earth issued a press release via GlobeNewswire announcing the “successful commissioning of its commercial magnet production line (Phase 1a)” and stating that the process is “managed from start to finish by the more than 100 employees of USAR’s Stillwater facility.” This is the company’s first public claim of having met the 100-employee threshold.
The timing warrants scrutiny. As recently as December 31, 2024, the company reported only 30 employees in its SEC filings (down from 41 at end of 2023). In late February 2026, the company held a hiring event at Meridian Technology Center in Stillwater for production operators and maintenance technicians, LinkedIn and approximately 16–21 job listings remained active on Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter. Glassdoor +2 Growing from 30 to “more than 100” employees in roughly 15 months, with a surge in hiring weeks before the deadline, suggests the company may have accelerated staffing specifically to satisfy contractual requirementsa legal and rational strategy, but one that raises questions about the sustainability and quality of the employment.
The company has generated zero revenue from operations through at least the third quarter of 2025. Its auditors have issued going concern warnings. It has cycled through four CEOs since the 2022 announcement. And the original promise of production beginning in 2023 has slipped by more than three years.
The most significant finding across all sources is the opacity of the TIF agreement itself. An anonymous whistleblower filed a request with Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd on May 16, 2025, alleging the deal “contains no enforceable binding job quotas.” As of March 2026, no public response has been disclosed. Mayor Joyce has held no public meetings to discuss USA Rare Earth’s performance against TIF milestones and has issued no public statements about compliance monitoring or enforcement.
The Oklahoma Post has published the most sustained investigative coverage of the deal, with at least eight detailed articles between May 2025 and March 2026. The most comprehensive breakdown of TIF terms, clawback provisions, and subsidy totals appeared on February 22, 2026, under the headline “$8.2 Million from Oklahoma, $277 Million from Feds, Zero Dollars in Revenue: The USA Rare Earth Math Problem.” The outlet’s March 5, 2026 article documented the approaching deadline while noting the silence from city officials.
The total public subsidy picture extends well beyond Stillwater. The Trump administration announced $1.6 billion in federal funding in January 2026 a $277 million equity swap and $1.3 billion senior secured loan through the CHIPS Program Office drawing scrutiny from Democratic Senators Warren, Van Hollen, and Wyden over conflicts of interest involving Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s family firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, which placed the accompanying $1.5 billion PIPE transaction.
Stillwater didn’t create a broad redevelopment district. It effectively built a one-property TIF where the success or failure of the entire public investment hinges on a single facility. USAR did not respond to this publication’s question about whether the company is considering relocating Stillwater operations to Houston or closer to the Round Top deposit in Hudspeth County, Texas, approximately 900 miles from Stillwater. The Phase 1a announcement does not address that question.
The Oklahoma Post will continue to report on USAR’s obligations to Stillwater taxpayers as the March 31 TIF deadline passes.
The elections are in November.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
USA Rare Earth Phase 1a commissioning press release, Globe Newswire, March 26, 2026 — https://www.globenewswire.com
USA Rare Earth and Arnold Magnetic Technologies partnership press release, Globe Newswire, March 23, 2026 — https://www.globenewswire.com
Manufacturing Dive, Jeffrey Kinney, USA Rare Earth, Arnold Magnetic Technologies partner to expand domestic magnet supply, March 25, 2026 — https://www.manufacturingdive.com
Rep. Zoe Lofgren press release, Ranking Member Lofgren Raises Alarm Over Terms of Commerce Department Equity Stake in USA Rare Earth, March 20, 2026 — https://lofgren.house.gov
Democracy Defenders Fund and Public Citizen, joint press release demanding resignation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, March 10, 2026 — https://www.democracydefendersfund.org/prs/03.10.26-pr
CBS News, Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show, February 7, 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/howard-lutnick-jeffrey-epstein-in-business-together/
CNN, Howard Lutnick’s Epstein ties raise concerns on Wall Street but not in the White House, February 15, 2026 — https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/15/politics/howard-lutnick-epstein-ties-trump
NBC News, Under fire for Epstein ties, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defends visiting his private island, February 13, 2026 — https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/howard-lutnick-jeffrey-epstein-island-rcna258333
The New Republic, Howard Lutnick Exposed for Even More Lies About His Epstein Ties, February 2026 — https://newrepublic.com/post/206917/howard-lutnick-lies-epstein-ties-business
Fox Baltimore, On Capitol Hill, Democrats press Lutnick on Epstein ties and rare earth conflicts, March 2026 — https://foxbaltimore.com/news/nation-world/the-heat-is-on-commerce-secretary-lutnick-over-epstein-familys-tariff-refund-wagers
Stillwater News Press, City of Stillwater approves $7 million incentive for USA Rare Earth, June 7, 2022 — https://www.stwnewspress.com/news/city-of-stillwater-approves-7-million-incentive-for-usa-rare-earth-manufacturing-facility/
Oklahoma Department of Commerce, Governor Stitt secures first domestic rare earth metal and magnet manufacturing facility, June 2022 — https://www.okcommerce.gov/governor-stitt-department-of-commerce-secure-first-domestic-rare-earth-metal-and-magnet-manufacturing-facility/
The Oklahoma Post, $8.2 Million from Oklahoma, $277 Million from Feds, Zero Dollars in Revenue, Feb. 22, 2026 — https://theokpost.com/news/business/8-2-million-from-oklahoma-277-million-from-feds-zero-dollars-in-revenue-the-usa-rare-earth-math-problem/2026/02/22/
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