Don’t Blame the Fed for Raising Interest Rates, Blame It for Not Raising Them Sooner!

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The news that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates by a quarter of a percent is likely to inspire a variety of reactions, depending heavily on one’s political philosophy and one’s view of monetary policy. Those on the Left are likely to want low interest rates to persist indefinitely, believing that such an environment will encourage borrowing and spending, and therefore stimulate the economy. Those on the Right will probably welcome higher interest rates as encouraging saving and being beneficial to investors. Trump supporters will probably see the Fed’s actions as a partisan attempt to damage the president-elect, knowing that higher interest rates are usually accompanied by a short-term hit to the stock market. There is very probably some truth to this last accusation. Rather than speculate on motivations, let’s take a step back and examine how the control of interest rates actually works and what the effects are.

The chief function of the Federal Reserve is to regulate the quantity of money in the economy. While the media loves to talk about how the Fed controls interest rates, the bank can’t actually dictate the rates that banks offer. Instead, they influence these rates indirectly by either increasing or decreasing the amount of money in circulation. Pumping more money into the economy tends to drive rates down, while less money tends to mean higher interest rates. This is an important insight because it shows that the Fed can’t actually keep interest rates near zero forever. There is a limit to how much they can increase the money supply without causing catastrophic rises in prices.

Many people think that increasing interest rates is bad for the economy, because stock market indices like the Dow Jones usually fall as interest rates rise. But the stock market is not the economy, only one piece of it. The reason the stock market does well with low interest rates is that investors seeking a return on their money have no other option than to buy stock — low interest rates make other investments unattractive. Conversely, when interest rates rise, interest bearing accounts become comparatively more profitable, and people take money out of the stock market to reinvest in something safer. The decline in stock prices is not necessarily a signal of economic weakness, but merely reflects a reallocation of funds from one investment to another.

In short, changing the money supply changes people’s behavior, or at least changes the incentives to which they respond. Once you realize that the entire economy runs based on people responding to the right incentives, it’s easy to see how the process of centrally controlling the money supply can go very badly wrong. If the Fed sends the wrong signals, it can lead to massive amounts of money being invested in the wrong places. When those investments fail, the result is an economy-wide recession.

This is why most libertarians — with Ron Paul being the most prominent example — strongly oppose the Federal Reserve’s meddling in the economy. By holding interest rates down to artificially low levels for such a long period of time, the Fed encourages lots of borrowing, with the implication being that most Americans are saving their money to be spent later. Otherwise, why would there be so much cash in bank vaults to be borrowed? But this assumption leads businesses into making bad decisions, because that savings doesn’t really exist, and people are in fact spending their money now rather than later. You can imagine the disaster that would befall a business planning for future spending that will never come. Now imagine that thousands of businesses are falling into the same error, all because of signals sent by the Federal Reserve, and you have a recipe for economic calamity.

That brings us back to the original question. Should the Fed raise interest rates? Short answer: Yes. They’ve been too low for far too long. Slightly longer answer: The Fed should get out of the business of deciding what the “right” interest rate is, and let market forces set rates instead. This is the only way we’ll avoid the painful consequences of misinformation, bad investments, and future recessions. (For more from the author of “Don’t Blame the Fed for Raising Interest Rates, Blame It for Not Raising Them Sooner!” please click HERE)

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Fearmongering Harry Reid Is Spewing Lies About Obamacare

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Democrats have lied about Obamacare from the beginning, but outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., apparently intends to tell the biggest lie of all as he exits the Washington scene.

In an interview about whether Republicans in Congress would make good on their promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Reid said, “You get rid of Obamacare, people are going to die.”

President Barack Obama’s promise that if we liked our doctor we could keep our doctor turned out not to be true, and so did his pledge that health care premium costs would go down. As millions of Americans eventually found out, they went up.

But a politician failing to keep his promises, as egregious as those two were, pales in comparison to Reid’s outrageous and baseless comments that “people are going to die” if the failing law is repealed and replaced.

Perhaps what Reid should consider are the real-life stories of people who have lost their lives because of Obamacare.

People like Frank Alfisi, who was refused dialysis in the emergency room because of a new Medicare regulation put in place via Obamacare. Or Julie, a mother of four, who delayed seeking medical attention waiting for her new government-approved insurance to kick in because her family’s private health care had been canceled. Or Linda, a Nevada woman who was delayed in getting treatment for a brain tumor because of enrollment snafus in her state’s Obamacare exchange.

Though Reid offered no proof for his comments, he seemed to suggest that repealing the unaffordable Affordable Care Act would cause the health care insurance marketplace to collapse—and that this was the GOP’s plan, stating, “Can you think of … something more cold and calculated than that.”

Yet, it is because of Obamacare that next year, 33 states will have fewer insurers offering individual coverage on the exchanges than they did this year.

The country’s largest health care provider, UnitedHealthcare, announced last April that it was pulling out of the majority of the exchanges due to high costs. Humana also says it is cutting back, and Blue Cross Blue Shield has already moved to reduce its offerings in several states.

If Reid is so concerned about the collapse of the health care marketplace, perhaps he and his pal House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should have read the Obamacare bill before they, without one Republican vote, passed it.

And let’s be clear about one other matter.

The majority of new health care enrollments via Obamacare came by putting people on Medicaid. And as studies show, not only do patients with Medicaid receive poorer care than those who have private insurance, but because of low reimbursement rates, more and more doctors are refusing to accept Medicaid patients, meaning individuals on Medicaid are having a harder time finding primary care doctors and specialists to treat them.

So just because someone has been given a Medicaid card with their name on it doesn’t mean they are able to get the health care they need. All Obamacare has done is added millions more people to a program that was already failing the people it is supposed to serve.

Democrats’ refusal to see the truth about Obamacare and how it is hurting the American people is one of the main reasons Republicans won the presidency and retained control of both the House and Senate.

Somebody needs to tell Harry. (For more from the author of “Fearmongering Harry Reid Is Spewing Lies About Obamacare” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Last Gift to Planned Parenthood

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President Barack Obama has given Planned Parenthood a parting gift in the final weeks of his administration.

As reported by The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would prohibit states from blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Title X family planning services grant money for reasons “unrelated” to its ability to provide family planning services.

The rule has been finalized and will be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 19.

The rule was proposed in response to several states’ attempt to defund Planned Parenthood after the nation’s largest abortion provider was featured in a series of undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress last year.

The videos raised questions about whether Planned Parenthood illegally profits off the sale of tissue from aborted babies.

Just this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, referred Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue procurement companies to the FBI and Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.

States—including Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin—redirected Title X funds to other entities, such as federally qualified health centers that offer comprehensive health care services to uninsured and low-income Americans.

After all, these federally qualified health centers are able to serve at least 8 times more individual patients than Planned Parenthood and they outnumber Planned Parenthood locations 13-to-1.

But the Obama administration is determined to block the states and give one last present to its political ally.

Thankfully, the next administration and Congress can ensure that this rule is short-lived.

Members of Congress have already warned federal agencies “against finalizing pending rules or regulations in the administration’s last days” and that should agencies refuse to heed the warning, members would work to “ensure that Congress scrutinizes your actions—and, if appropriate, overturns them—pursuant to the Congressional Review Act.”

According to the Congressional Review Act, Congress and a new president can overturn rules issued in the waning days of a previous administration.

The Congressional Research Service has estimated that anything submitted to Congress after the end of May 2016 can be undone in this manner, meaning there are many rules and regulations that the incoming Congress could and should vote to rescind.

The House Freedom Caucus has just issued a special report outlining more than 220 items across federal agencies that can be addressed next year, including the Department of Education transgender mandate, paid sick leave for federal contractors, and the Paris climate agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.

Incoming members should put Planned Parenthood’s parting gift on the list of items to address using the Congressional Review Act when Congress returns in the new year. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Last Gift to Planned Parenthood” please click HERE)

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Facebook’s Reliance on Liberal Fact-Checkers Means Your News Is About to Be Censored

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Facebook doesn’t think you know what’s “fake news” and what’s not.

In an announcement Thursday, the social media giant said it was going to crack down on fake news through a variety of ways, including letting users report what they deem to be fake news.

But one item on Facebook’s list of methods to crack down was particularly concerning:

We’ve started a program to work with third-party fact-checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Code of Principles. We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact-checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why.

When you look at the signatories on the Poynter list, you’ll find seven from the United States: ABC News, The Washington Post, Snopes, Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Climate Feedback, and Politifact.

Aha.

Talk about the devil being in the details. These are hardly unbiased fact-checkers—conservatives have raised alarms about several of them. Let’s go through some examples:

1). Snopes. You may have heard that the terrorist who murdered 49 people and injured dozens more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was a Democrat. That’s for a reason: Omar Mateen was registered as a Democrat. Yet Snopes took issue with that characterization, saying it was “undetermined” because Mateen’s “U.S. political affiliation (if any) at the time of the shooting is unknown.”

Snopes’ Kim LaCapria continued:

However, being a member of any particular political party involves expressing an ongoing allegiance to that party and its principles: one could be pegged as a Democrat (or a Republican, or a member of any other party) if he ran for office as a member of that party, exclusively campaigned or raised money for that party and its candidates, or consistently voted for that party’s candidates. But there’s no evidence that Mateen materially supported any particular political party, nor do we know how he voted (or whether he ever voted at all).

All we know is that 10 years ago he registered as a Democrat, and voter registration is an imperfect indicator that governs nothing more than which party’s primary a citizen is eligible to vote in …

What?

It’s hard to make sense of this, but it basically boils down to: No one can be labeled a member of any party unless they consistently have run for office, donated money, or voted for that party’s candidates (something that could never be proved, incidentally, since we have secret ballots).

Which is a ridiculous standard. Look, I’m someone who is registered Republican to vote in the primaries, and who has plenty of quibbles with the GOP, and yet I would agree if I were identified as a Republican by a news site, it would be true—because I am registered as a Republican.

2). Politifact. Back in June, Donald Trump said, “Crime is rising.” Politifact blasted this claim as “pants on fire.” Then the American Enterprise Institute’s Sean Kennedy looked into the facts, noted Politifact had looked at statistics ending in 2014, and wrote: “The FBI’s preliminary 2015 figures actually do show crime rising in most categories across the country between 2014 and 2015.” Politifact responded … that it stood by its rating.

3). The Washington Post. Here’s a fun one: in 2015, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that “we, right now, have more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible.” The Post looked at the claim and wrote, “The literally translated King James Version of the Bible contains just over 800,000 words. There are as many as 3.7 million individual words in the IRS tax code.” So Cruz deserves a true rating, right? Wrong—at least according to The Post, which went on to say: “This is a nonsense fact, something that is technically correct but ultimately meaningless.”

So perhaps in the new Facebook era, the Orlando terrorist being a Democrat, Trump discussing the rise in crime, and Cruz saying the IRS code has more words than the Bible would all be buried as “fake news” … despite being true.

Other U.S. organizations listed in the Poynter directory Facebook says it will rely on are Climate Feedback (which I’m not familiar with, but at a cursory glance does not appear to be challenging the liberal groupthink on climate change), and ABC News (home to George Stephanopoulos, who worked for the Clinton White House, and oh, didn’t disclose he had donated to the Clinton Foundation).

There is undoubtedly “fake news” online—and consumers should work to be responsible about sharing information, fact-checking themselves claims that seem spurious.

And Facebook, of course, is a private company that legally can do what it wants regarding its content.

But while Facebook legally can crack down on “fake news,” it’s unfortunate it has chosen to do so, particularly by relying on liberal organizations’ fact-checks as the arbiters.

It’s clear that the system Facebook has announced is much more likely to result in crackdowns on conservative outlets than liberal outlets—which is bad news for all of us conservatives on Facebook. (For more from the author of “Facebook’s Reliance on Liberal Fact-Checkers Means Your News Is About to Be Censored” please click HERE)

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Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory

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Since her op-ed in the Washington Post last week lamenting “the way Trump won,” Clinton Communications Director Jen Palmieri has done a turn on a host of cable news shows, demanding “introspection” from the Trump team for supposedly winning by appealing to, and empowering, white supremacists.

Ms. Palmieri, it seems, has taken her sour grapes and disguised them as a self-righteous crusade against the very “deplorables” that cost her boss the election.

Ms. Palmieri’s op-ed and subsequent comments read like a calculated exercise in self-delusion; the kind where people construct an alternate reality to live in because reality itself is too difficult to accept. In this instance, Palmieri takes the existence of white supremacy in America as somehow proof that Donald Trump rode to power on its back.

While that might make a more comfortable world for Palmieri to live in — one where she doesn’t have to acknowledge the weaknesses of her own candidate — the electoral facts of this election simply do not bear that out.

Perhaps no detail illustrates this more than the number 209. That’s the number of counties that voted to send Barack Obama to the White House (and not just once, but twice), that flipped to support Trump — and overwhelmingly so.

Again, those are counties that voted for Trump after overwhelmingly supported a black president for two election cycles. If this election was indeed a cover for empowering white supremacists, how does Palmieri explain this statistic?

Aside from how impressive that number is, there are equally unimpressive numbers for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Palmieri might do well to heed the number six. That’s the number of counties that never supported Obama, but voted for Clinton. Yes, just six.

If Palmieri can’t discern the message embedded in those numbers, it’s this: Her candidate failed to reach reliable Democratic voters, but even worse, utterly failed to convince anyone else to join her team.

It wasn’t some bizarre pact with the Ku Klux Klan (an organization that Trump has disavowed) that put Trump in the White House. Nor was there an uprising of white supremacist voters for Donald Trump — or any popular upsurge for Trump at all, in fact. He received about as many votes as Mitt Romney did in 2012. Votes for Trump were just better distributed throughout traditionally blue states in the industrial Midwest — and that was crucial to his victory.

Even more damning for Ms. Palmieri’s claims of empowered sects white supremacists is that Trump actually did better with black and Hispanic voters than Romney did. As one pollster noted in recent analysis,

With Barack Obama off the ticket – and Ms. Clinton on it – higher percentages of both [black and Hispanic voters] voted Republican last month. Black voters helped Mr. Trump even more by staying home. In crucial Michigan and Wisconsin, Ms. Clinton received an estimated 129,000 fewer of their votes than Mr. Obama, more than Mr. Trump’s combined margin of victory in two states. [Emphasis added.]

Ms. Palmieri can bemoan the negative aspects of American society all she wants, but the simple fact is, that’s not why Donald Trump won.

Rather, the post-election analysis shows that Trump simply went to states that Hillary Clinton spent little time in instead taking them for granted. In Michigan and Wisconsin — traditionally blue states that went to Trump — Clinton’s campaign was drastically under resourced.

Per one report, Michigan had one-tenth the canvasser capacity utilized by then-Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential race. The same poor ground game cost Clinton Pennsylvania. As tellingly is where the candidates chose to spend the most time in the last 100 days of the election. Trump made 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin. Clinton made 87.

These electoral statistics don’t even begin to address the quality of candidates and their messaging, and the role that played in the election. Trump may have lacked the 30 years of political experience of Clinton; often much less polished, unfiltered, and politically incorrect.

In fact, it’s perhaps exactly what the voters were hungry for: a candidate that appealed to those voters who felt displaced, disenfranchises, and looking for real change (not the type promised by Senator Barack Obama back in 2008).

As for Hillary Clinton, she could not have been a more status-quo candidate. Moreover, she failed entirely to reach voters in rural areas, a constituency Democrats have long taken for granted. But without a compelling economic strategy, or any strategy really — except to promise another Obama-term — the Clinton campaign did little to sway them.

In fact, Politico reported that Clinton’s campaign team had one staffer dedicated to rural outreach — based in Brooklyn.

Despite Palmieri’s hysterics, perceived support from the fringe of American society is not responsible for electing Trump. Palmieri may not agree with all the Trump team’s rhetorical tactics. Indeed, some disagreement should in fact be expected, but her inability to recognize the strategic failures of the campaign she ran, not to mention the poor quality of her own candidate, should be evidence that Democrats are nothing but sore losers. (For more from the author of “Why 209 Is the Most Significant Number Behind Trump’s Victory” please click HERE)

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Highlights: Now Bringing the LGBT Agenda to Your Child

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I grew up in a quiet and isolated environment in the woods of East Texas. I was home-schooled and home-churched. We didn’t have a television or radio. When my sisters and I received a Highlights magazine in the mailbox, it was a good day. We’d take turns reading the magazine, then read it all over again.

Highlights and Hello

Now that I have children of my own, one of whom is only 2 years old, I look forward to reading all of the fun kids’ books and magazines again. I was happy to discover that Highlights — a magazine geared toward children from 6 to 12 years old — now offers a book called Hello for the littlest ones ages 0 to 2. I was excited when my son’s grandmother bought a subscription to it for him.

Hello is just the right size and length for a tiny tot and covers age-appropriate subjects like being afraid of the dark or thunderstorms, or the anxiety around bedtime — or at least it did cover age-appropriate subjects until LGBT activists got their way. Highlights has recently announced that Highlights and even Hello will cover same-sex families in its pages.

A lesbian mother complained to the magazine in October about Hello’s lack of same-sex parents within stories (remember, geared toward 0 to 2 year olds!). Highlights responded on Facebook with:

We couldn’t agree more that diversity should be celebrated, and we strive to do that. … It has always been a discussion of ‘how’ and ‘when’ — not ‘if’ — Highlights would feature a LGBTQ family in our magazines.

Last month The American Conservative published a letter from Highlights in which the Editor in Chief Christine French Cully assured one subscriber that Highlights would “depict same-sex families in our magazines in a manner consistent to the way all diverse families are depicted.” She said all the company’s magazines

strive to be diverse in every way. The goal, however, is not to specifically call attention to diversity but instead to help kids understand that while differences exist, we are all actually more alike than different. … This is in support of our mission to help children become their best selves and understand that all families, including theirs, are important.

For a relatively few (about 125,000 families with same-sex parents out of 70 million households raising children), a once-clean, conservative and wholesome magazine will offend many of its readers.

Total Indoctrination

Sadly, this is not simply an issue about same-sex parents wanting to normalize their household situation for the sake of their little ones. It’s much bigger than that. It’s about the total indoctrination of our youth with values contrary to those held by Christians, beginning with our babies.

Indoctrinating the youngest among us is the surest way to change the world. The LGBT activists — and a handful of representative parents — seem quite intent on doing so.

Speaking as a concerned parent, same-sex orientation as a topic is completely inappropriate for my two-year-old. It goes against my core values and Christian beliefs and is not a subject that should be discussed in reading material for such small children.

Simply because one LGBT parent wishes to see her family’s lifestyle in a book for her infant or small child (as nice as that may be for her) does not make it morally or socially acceptable, regardless of what Highlights’ editor in chief believes. It is mind-boggling how for such few families Highlights is willing to change their wholesome model.

Children of Same-Sex Parents

A same-sex family cannot be described as “normal” or natural or healthy. Children of same-sex parents are twice as likely to suffer from depression and at greater risk for abuse, suicide, anxiety, stigma and obesity. Children are most likely to succeed when they grow up with a mother and a father.

It’s not something that a magazine should be pushing on very small children. I should not be forced to discuss an immoral lifestyle with our infants and small children if I want them to enjoy Hello or Highlights. This is a subject that must be left up to parents to discuss at a time and place they believe is most appropriate for their children, not imposed as a story line in a children’s magazine for two year olds. (For more from the author of “Highlights: Now Bringing the LGBT Agenda to Your Child” please click HERE)

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Northeast Awaits Bitter Cold Blanketing the Midwest

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As the season’s first bitter cold spell gripped the Upper Midwest on Wednesday, schools and officials farther east braced for the icy blast to spread their way as early as Thursday.

People in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin were under a wind chill advisory Wednesday from the National Weather Service, as were parts of Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Wednesday’s highs ranged from 20 to 30 degrees below average in the northern U.S., according to the weather service. The temperature was 4 below in Fargo, North Dakota, early Wednesday, and a daylight reprieve in the single digits was short-lived, with lows Thursday morning forecast to be around minus-12. Duluth, Minnesota, was forecast for an overnight low of minus-5. (Read more from “Northeast Awaits Bitter Cold Blanketing the Midwest” HERE)

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Dems Scramble to Prevent Their Own from Defecting to Trump

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Senate Democrats have been scrambling to prevent two of their members from taking a post in the Trump administration, trying to prevent any defection that could bolster Republicans’ control of the chamber.

They recently launched a “full court press” to retain Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Heidi Heitkamp, of North Dakota, after each met with Republican President-elect Donald Trump, one senior Senate Democrat told Fox News.

Manchin now appears less likely to bolt — after saying he wants to remain in the Senate and being passed over for Energy secretary — which puts the focus squarely on Heitkamp.

The first-term lawmaker, who faces reelection in 2018 in a conservative state, still appears in the running for the Agriculture secretary post.

A Trump transition team source told Fox News the president-elect “really wants her” for the job. (Read more from “Dems Scramble to Prevent Their Own from Defecting to Trump” HERE)

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Jeb Bush Expresses Doubt Over Russian Influence in Presidential Election

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made it clear Monday night that he takes claims of Russian meddling in the presidential election with a grain of salt.

“The Ruskies are out there sticking things in people’s brains?’ I mean, come on,” Bush said during an appearance Monday in Kingsport, Tenn.

Bush, a candidate in the Republican primary, said the election was not about who the Russians wanted to win, but who America’s voters chose.

“They [the Russians] had a candidate that they thought would be better than Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t influence the election. The American people made up their minds on this,” he said.

Bush also refused to join the chorus of criticism over Trump’s secretary of state choice, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has conducted business with Russia and was honored by Russia for his partnership efforts. He said that upcoming hearings will get to the truth.

“My guess is what they’ll find is a guy with vast experience. A patriot. … Someone who will represent the U.S. really, very well,” he said.

Bush, who was a foil for Trump’s jabs throughout the Republican presidential primary process, noted that his opinion of Trump is shifting.

“I didn’t vote for him. I made it clear I wasn’t going to support him. In my mind at that time I didn’t think either candidate passed the threshold of who should be sitting behind that desk in the Oval Office,” Bush said.

“Now, he’s won. My hope and prayer each and every day is that he understands the incredible opportunity he has to serve, that he has a servant’s heart and that he leads,” he added.

Bush said the difference between campaigning and governing will be a test for Trump.

“It’s going to be tough. I hope he realizes his words have big consequences,” he said. “There are a lot of people counting on the restoration of economic lift.”

Bush has even found reason to sound cautiously optimistic.

“He’s appointed some really solid, committed conservatives to his cabinet and for that I’m very grateful,” Bush said. “Our economy has lagged behind because of over regulation and I think his appointments suggest that he’s serious about draining the swamp. So I’m excited about that.”

Bush also said he looks forward to a better healthcare system.

“Obamacare will be repealed, but this is somewhat a question of semantics. You can’t repeal it completely,” Bush said, adding that parts of Obamacare will remain in any new healthcare system. “My guess is this is going to take a few years, so you’ll see, hopefully, something that takes the power out of Washington and empower people to make these decisions.” (For more from the author of “Jeb Bush Expresses Doubt Over Russian Influence in Presidential Election” please click HERE)

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6 Months After the Orlando Attack, Has the FBI Forgotten About the Terrorist’s Wife?

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Six months ago, 29-year-old Omar Mateen walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and committed the deadliest single-shooter mass shooting in American history.

The ISIS-inspired Mateen — born in New York to Afgan parents — stormed into the LGBT club on June 12 and massacred 49 people, wounding 53 more.

Evidence remains that his second wife and now-widow, Noor Salman, was an accomplice to the crime. Yet, she remains free and is believed to be in hiding somewhere in the United States.

For reasons unclear, federal authorities have not yet pressed charges against Salman and have kept the American people in the dark concerning this case since June.

Here’s what we know about the Palestinian-born Salman’s ties to the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

Before the attack

Before the shooting, Salman reportedly drove with her husband all the way to Orlando — an hour drive from their home in Fort Pierce — to case several sites. That included the Pulse nightclub, she admitted to the FBI in the aftermath of the attacks.

At around the same timeframe, she was with Mateen when he stocked up on ammunition. Prior to the jihad at Pulse nightclub, Mateen added Salman to his life-insurance policy and made sure she had access to his bank accounts, additional reporting states.

The night of terror

Salman, 30, reportedly told the FBI that on the night of the attack that she feared her husband would do something horrible. But she did not alert authorities.

Moreover, Mateen specifically told his wife he was going to “carry out a jihadist attack.” Salman, however, has denied any prior knowledge of the Orlando plot.

“FBI investigators don’t believe Noor Salman was a co-conspirator in the attack that killed 49 people Sunday morning at Pulse,” CNN reported.

After the attack

Noor Salman reappeared in public view a few days later. With a grey sweater pulled over her face, she walked into the home she shared with Mateen and their 3-year-old son to gather their belongings.

Local news outlet WFTV reported on June 14 that Salman could be on the verge of arrest and charged as an accessory to the crime, but that arrest never happened.

On June 20, Attorney General Loretta Lynch shockingly revealed that she had no idea about Salman’s whereabouts. “I believe she was going to travel but I do not exactly know her location now,” Lynch stated. Her statement led to speculation that Salman had fled the country for Jordan or the West Bank. But it appears she is still somewhere in the United States.

The interview

Noor Salman broke her long silence in an exclusive interview with The New York Times on Nov. 1.

“She has moved three times since the attack, hoping to avoid the news media, and asked that her current location not be disclosed,” the Times story, with a dateline of “Washington,” reported.

Salman still denies any involvement or advance knowledge of the jihadi onslaught. That is in direct conflict with previous reports.

“A law enforcement official told ABC News that she may have known something about the incident in advance but claims she tried to talk him out of the assault,” ABCNews.com reported on June 14.

She admitted in the NYT interview she knew Mateen had shown increasing signs of radicalization. Officials who secured his electronic records said he would frequently watch sermons by the late al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al Awlaki, and ISIS propaganda.

The New York Times positions Salman as a victim of Mateen’s domestic abuse who was simply “too busy trying to survive.” Nowhere in the interview does she discuss her reported comments to federal officials about casing possible attack sites with her late husband, and other evidence connecting her to the crime, claiming her lawyer would not let her discuss it.

“How can someone be capable of that?” Salman told the Times, concluding her interview, having addressed none of the circumstantial evidence connecting her to the crime.

What’s next?

A 2013 study of terror incidents in the United States and Europe found that in 64 percent of cases, relatives and/or friends had advance knowledge of the coming terror. Is Noor Salman a member of the 64 percent?

The FBI has not updated any information pertaining to Noor Salman’s status since late June. There is no publicly available information regarding a possible investigation, and when Conservative Review contacted the FBI to ask about any update to the case, a spokesperson said the Pulse investigation is still ongoing, and that policy does not permit them to comment on any ongoing investigation.

Our government has left the American people completely in the dark about a possible co-conspirator to the worst terror attack since 9/11. (For more from the author of “6 Months After the Orlando Attack, Has the FBI Forgotten About the Terrorist’s Wife?” please click HERE)

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