Watchdog: Several ‘Acting’ Biden Officials in Violation of Federal Law

Molly Bruns
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Watchdog: Several ‘Acting’ Biden Officials in Violation of Federal Law

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Government Accountability Office discovered that several officials for the Biden administration are in violation of federal law by holding office.

According to the Daily Wire, the GAO issued five reports with the discoveries of their investigations.

The officials, who work in “acting roles” while sanctioned positions in the Executive Branch remain vacant, have violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Established in 1998, the act “establishes requirements for temproary filling vacant positions in Executive Branch agencies that require a persidential appointment and Senate confirmation,” the GAO said in a report.

“This act identifies who may temporarily serve, for how long, and what happens when no one is erving under the act and the position is vacant.”

The group, which technically operates under the legislative branch, forwarded reports of the violations to both the president and Congress.

The staffers that have overstayed their welcome include a member of the Office of Management and Budget, Assistant Secretary of ICE and a high-ranking member of the Department of Justice.

Some of the officials who stayed beyond their limited term set by federal law include Deidre Harrison, acting Controlloer of the Office of Federal Financial Management within the White House Office of Management and Budget; Allison Randall, who is acting Director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women; Charlotte A. Dye, acting General Counsel for the Federal Labor Relations Authority; and Karen Freeman, Craig Hart and Ann Marie Yastishock, who all serve as Assistant Administrators of the Bureau for Asia in the U.S. Agency for the International Development.

All of these positions require both presidential appointment and confirmation by the Senate. “Acting” officials take over each position for a period of 210 days, with the possibility of an extension to a maximum of 300 days.

Once the time period is up, that particular office is required to remain vacant. The head of each respective agency must take on the duties of the vacant office.

Several of the officials are serving years past the time their tenure’s expiration date, putting the Biden administration in violation of federal law in several respects.

Clinton Shill James Carville Accuses MTG of Dressing Like ‘White Trash’

Jacob Bruns
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Clinton Shill James Carville Accuses MTG of Dressing Like ‘White Trash’

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) In a recent appearance on MSNBC, former Bill Clinton campaign manager James Carville said that Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., dresses like “white trash,” the Blaze reported.

The folksy Louisianan, who was brought on to react to Tuesday’s State of the Union address by citing, began the interview by citing his own expertise in the study of white trash.

“I tell people I have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in white trashology, and we saw real white trash on display,” he claimed, referring to Greene’s white fur coat.

“Let me tell you something about Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene—she dresses like white trash,” said Carville, while wearing a baseball cap and Mardi-Gras-colored rugby shirt.

“She really needs a fashion consultant. I recommend George Santos,” Carville joked, referring to the cross-dressing congressman from New York. “He could do a good job of dressing up where she doesn’t announce her own white trashdom,” he continued.

Later in the interview, Carville returned to the point that he really wanted to get across: that Republicans are not fashionable enough for his taste.

“The level of white-trashdom in the Republican Party is staggering,” he said. “I mean, for somebody that has observed it for a long time like I have, I’ve never seen it manifest itself on a level that it’s manifesting itself.”

Of course, Democrats are happy to insult others ad nauseam, but quickly become advocates of “civility” when the insults go their direction.

President Joe Biden, preferring a passive-aggressive politics, complained Wednesday that American political life was becoming “too personal” and “mean.”

“Most Americans are of the view that this has gotten too mean, it has gotten too personal, it has gotten too divisive,” he noted.

Republicans scoffed at the complaints from the Left that they were overly raucous in reacting to Biden’s blatantly false statements.

Some noted that at former President Donald Trump’s last State of the Union address, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made a show of ripping up his speech in front of him.

Biden, himself, has been a major source of divisiveness after claiming repeatedly during the 2022 campaign season that his Republican opponents were an “ultra-MAGA” and “semi-fascist” threat to democracy.

Disney to Ax 7,000 Staff in Cost-Cutting Effort after Streaming Platform Tanks

Molly Bruns
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Disney to Ax 7,000 Staff in Cost-Cutting Effort after Streaming Platform Tanks

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) In a recent earnings report, the Walt Disney Company revealed that its streaming platform, Disney+, lost 2.4 million subscribers, resulting in the need for a massive reorganization within the company.

With the recent monthly upcharge for for the monthly streaming service—which went from $7.99 to $10.99—projections showed Disney+ would lose more than 3 million subscribers.

According to the Daily Caller, the total loss of subscribers is not as extreme as originally anticipated. Nonetheless, the embattled company announced that it will be restructuring as a cost-cutting measure, shifting its focus elsewhere as on-demand streaming content faces an uncertain future.

Recently reinstated Disney CEO Bob Iger is also seeking $5.5 billion in budget cuts, with at least $2.5 million coming from “non-content” operations, which will result in around 7,000 employees being laid off—about 3% of the company’s entire workforce.

“We believe the work we are doing to reshape our company around creativity, while reducing expenses, will lead to sustained growth and profitability for our streaming business, better position us to weather future disruption and global economic challenges, and deliver value for our shareholders,” Iger said in a statement.

“This reorganization will result in a more cost-effective, coordinated and streamlined approach to our operations… I do not make this decision lightly,” Iger said.

Disney’s move also comes amid an uncertain economic outlook for the country at large. While the Biden administration has steadfastly denied evidence that the U.S. has been in a recession, relying on suspiciously adjusted jobs data to paint an overly rosy outlook, some of the biggest—and wokest—corporations seem to be making major cuts in preparation for the worst.

Tech companies including Google—which cut 12,000 jobs in January—have even fueled suspicion that they may be trying intentionally to engineer a recession now so that they can send the economy roaring back ahead of the 2024 election, when the incumbent Democrat administration is likely to face formidable challenges in its re-election effort.

Among those potentially vying for the White House is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has positioned himself as Disney’s top nemesis after the company tried, unsuccessfully, to virtue-signal its support for child grooming in response to Florida’s anti-grooming law.

The backlash not only threatens to revoke Disney’s autonomous control of its flagship Orlando-based Disney World theme park, but also resulted in widespread boycotts of the company’s content after top Disney executives were caught admitting that they secretly inserted sexually inappropriate LGBT messages into films and television series.

Disney’s direct-to-consumer operations saw a loss of $1.05 billion over the quarter, with a total revenue of $8.7 billion.

The entertainment giant did see growth in revenue inside their parks, with guests spending more this quarter than the previous, despite exhorbitant price-hikes and reports of everything from violent fights to sex-trafficking.

Disney is not the only entertainment company facing financial shortfalls and layoffs. Warner Bros Discovery is facing a similar situation. Stocks for Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount and Netflix have all been plummeting.

This news was welcomed by right-wing Twitter, who all told Disney “go woke; go broke.”

“Disney Netflix, Amazon are all paying the price of ‘go woke get broke,” user Martin Stephenson said. “It’s the hill they’re all happy to die on, fortunately their shareholders, investors don’t agree.”

“How’s that ESG score working out for ‘ya, Disney?” another user asked, adding the “#Scumbags” tag to the end of her tweet.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Traumatized NBC Staffers Threaten Walkout over Recent Layoffs

Molly Bruns
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Traumatized NBC Staffers Threaten Walkout over Recent Layoffs

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The staff of NBC and MSNBC news are threatening to host a performative walkout as a reaction to the recent rash of layoffs.

The network’s union, known as The NBC Guild, is staging the walkout on Thursday in protest of the layoffs. An estimated 300 employees will be participating, according to the Daily Caller.

“In three years of bargaining our first contract, NBC News has repeatedly broken the law — cutting union salaries and conducting layoffs behind closed doors, without bargaining,” the guild posted in a flyer on Twitter. “But the newsroom doesn’t run without us.”

The Guild repeatedly appealed to federal labor laws and the company’s refusal to “bargain” with the union employees.

“NBC News management has repeatedly violated federal labor law and refused to bargain with its unionized employees, most recently by laying off seven union journalists during contract negotiations and stripping a separate team of its union protections,” the guild said in a statement. “These hostile unilateral actions come on the heels of a federal court ordering NBC to repay union journalists for hundreds of thousands in stolen wages from 2020.”

Major news outlets, entertainment companies and tech giants across the country are also facing similar backlash over their sudden layoffs.

The Washington Post unexpectedly laid off 20 journalists, and received similar treatment from their union, The Washington Post Guild.

“We believe any job eliminations right now—at a time of continued growth and expansion—are unacceptable,” the guild wrote in a message to its members.

Conservative audiences had a hard time feeling bad for the journalists who constantly attack them as vicious “MAGA Republicans” and tyrannical insurrectionists.

“I wish you all felt about reporting the truth on national television as you do about this!” user CarmenIvy posted. “You sure would be getting tons more support if NBC/MSNBC would #JustTellTheTruth.”

“Don’t just walk out, leave!” another user said. “You are the fountain of fake news!”

Twitter’s Former Censorship Brass Squirm Their Way through Biden Laptop Hearing

Ken Silva
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Twitter’s Former Censorship Brass Squirm Their Way through Biden Laptop Hearing

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Little to no new evidence about Twitter-FBI collusion was revealed at Tuesday’s House Oversight Committee’s hearing into Twitter’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Republicans mostly rehashed what’s been revealed in the Twitter Files—the trove of internal company records released by new owner Elon Musk—chastising former executives for their improper decision to censor the New York Post’s October 2020 expose on the Biden laptop.

The witnesses at the hearing—former Twitter chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, executive Yoel Roth and deputy general counsel James Baker—admitted that censoring the story was incorrect. But they denied colluding with the FBI, and successfully evaded questions that would have implicated them in further wrongdoing.

For example, Baker was able to hide behind attorney-client privilege when pressured by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, about whether he advised Twitter how to respond to when the FBI sent the company lists of accounts to ban.

Likewise, he flexed attorney-client privilege when questioned by Jordan about suppressing internal Twitter records. Jordan’s questions were related to the Twitter Files revelation in December that Baker interfered with Musk’s release of the files and tried to suppress critical information from public view.

“I don’t have anything in writing that clears me in my ethical responsibilities to my client with respect to answering questions that I think fall within attorney-client privileges,” Baker told Jordan.

Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., attempted to coerce Baker into answering the question, telling him that the committee “does not recognize the common law attorney-client privilege.”

When Baker still declined to answer, Comer said, “We’ll have to deal with it after the committee hearing.” Comer, who appeared on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show after the hearing, has given no indication about what he plans to do about Baker’s refusal, nor has his press secretary responded to Headline USA’s inquiry about the issue.

Along with Baker’s refusal to answer, witnesses often pleaded ignorance about various issues of censorship.

“I’m not familiar with these particular situations,” Gadde said when grilled by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., about censoring accurate Covid information from noted experts such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

Even when Rep. Lauren Bobert, R-Colo., revealed new information that Roth signed off on shadow-banning her account for 90 days in 2021—she said she learned this from Twitter the night before the hearing—she spoke until her time was expired instead of having Roth explain himself.

Reflecting on Tuesday’s hearing, an article on The Conservative Treehouse explained why the Oversight Committee’s hearing failed to live up to its potential.

“The HOC committee assignments are selected based on the theatrical skills of each representative. This is not to say the motives of the members are sullied or impure, it is simply to point out the motive of the committee itself is to generate fundraising from the skillsets of the members on the committee,” the article said.

“If you watch the HOC Twitter hearing through the prism of expecting some form of accountability for the violations of the First Amendment, you will be frustrated and disappointed,” the article continued.

“However, if you watch the HOC Twitter hearing through the prism of how well the panelists will do at raising money from their performances, then you can evaluate the effectiveness; the proverbial winning and losing.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Whistleblower: FBI Tried to Target 140 J6 Rally-Goers for Taking Bus

Joshua Paladino
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Whistleblower: FBI Tried to Target 140 J6 Rally-Goers for Taking Bus

(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) George Hill, a retired FBI and NSA supervisory intelligence analyst, testified to Congress that the FBI’s Washington office pressured agents in Boston to open a criminal investigation into 140 people because they rode a bus to the January 6th rally.

Hill, a veteran who worked at the Boston field office until 2022, said supervisors in Boston refused to open criminal cases because Washington directors failed to provide evidence that the bus riders had committed crimes, Just the News reported.

“There’s no evidence of a crime being committed here,” he said on Just the News, No Noise.

“We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District,” he continued. “And so they pushed back, and Boston did not take any action on those names.”

The Washington field office increased the pressure on Boston’s supervisors, according to Hill, but they held their ground.

In other cases related to Jan. 6, however, the absence of criminal suspicion did not stop the FBI from accessing private information without warrants, Hill testified to the House Judiciary Committee.

Hill said the FBI sifted through banking records of Americans who had never been accused of a crime to determine if they owned a firearm or had traveled to D.C. on Jan. 6.

As the FBI violates the 4th Amendment rights of citizens in its politically motivated investigation, the agency has failed to disclose evidence about its own role in stoking trespassing into the Capitol building.

The undisclosed video evidence may reveal the identities of more undercover FBI provocateurs who fomented the Capitol chaos to discredit former President Donald Trump’s challenge to the certification  of the 2020 election results.

Special Agent Steve Friend previously disclosed similar information, alleging that the Washington field office pressured FBI agents across the country to open illegal investigations into Jan. 6 protesters.

Matt Walsh Has Epic Takedown of Tenn. Democrat over Underage Genital Removal

Jacob Bruns
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Matt Walsh Has Epic Takedown of Tenn. Democrat over Underage Genital Removal

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Conservative watchdog journalist Matt Walsh humiliated a Democrat in the Tennessee House of Representatives by confronting him head-on about transgender operations conducted on minors.

The Nashville-based Walsh, a writer for the Daily Wire, has been a leading advocate in exposing and attempting to fight the medical industry’s efforts to normalize controversial transgender surgeries, including bombshell revelations about how hospitals view the burgeoning practice as a cash cow that could potentially replace abortion.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Democrat Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a member of the House Health Committee, tried to catch Walsh in a contradiction, which then backfired on him, the Right Scoop reported.

Hemmer unearthed a blog post Walsh had written 14 years ago, in which he said that, in the eyes of many states, 16-year-olds are capable of making mature decisions like getting married.

The lawmaker then argued that, by Walsh’s own logic, teens ought also to be able to make decisions regarding the permanent dismemberment of their bodies.

Walsh dismissed the “gotcha” attack by noting that his comment was within the context of people marrying young—once a commonplace practice.

In response, Hemmer asked whether, in Walsh’s view, people should be considered adults at age 16, to which Walsh pointed out that human brains were not fully developed until age 25.

Thus, Walsh noted, it was “absurd” to allow those younger than the legal adult age of 18 to make such decisions, and then turned the tables back on Hemmer.

“Do you think a 16-year-old can meaningfully consent to having their body parts removed?” Walsh asked, followed by a dramatic pause. “Do you?”

The stunned Hemmer sat in silence until awkwardly rescued by Republican Committee Chair Bryan Terry, who responded, “We ask the questions,” before moving on to another lawmaker.

Walsh’s fiery opening comments of his testimony also drew the ire of Democrats, angered that he would speak openly against the lucrative industrial complex of so-called “gender affirming care.”

“She does not need hormone injections and scalpels,” Walsh said of a confused young girl. “She needs—and deserves—to be protected from those child-abusing quacks and vultures who wish to exploit her confusion for their own gains.”

In a shameless display, leftists in the Tennessee House also brought in transgender children to speak about their right to surgical procedures.

“All of the doctors in my area have stopped accepting new patients out of fear for this bill,” said transgender teen Elliot Atwood.

“The process is a slow one, and providers are cautious,” Atwood continued. “I’ve known who I am for most of my life, and still, I haven’t been able to access this kind of medical care.”

Militarized IRS Plans to Target Restaurant Tips

Jacob Bruns
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Militarized IRS Plans to Target Restaurant Tips

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s newly militarized Internal Revenue Service plans to target restaurant tips as it seeks new revenue streams to fund Democrats’ out-of-control spending, Fox News reported.

Despite repeated assurances that their new 87,000 armed agents would only crack down on the ultra-wealthy, the tax bureaucracy has instead decided to harass everyday middle-class taxpayers, invasively poring over every detail of their finances in the process.

The IRS recently announced the roll-out of its Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement, which will oversee how much waiters and waitresses make in tips across America.

The policy must first undergo an obligatory period of “public input” before the agency is able to implement it on a wide scale this summer.

In the name of “transparency,” the IRS wrote that it is seeking to “improve tip reporting compliance.”

Fox News contacted an IRS official regarding the proposal, who claimed businesses actually want the increased bureaucratic oversight.

“This is not a proposal for the auditing of servers,” the official noted.

“Yesterday’s action was a proposal for comment—not a rule—based on over a decade of feedback from restaurants and other businesses seeking the increased flexibility for their overall tax compliance on tips.”

The official also added that the agency will seek more input before they implement the rule.

“This proposal is not in effect and is intended to welcome further conversation from all interested parties before any rule is put into place,” the official said.

Of course, a closer look at the proposal suggests that the IRS plans to involve itself deeply in the regulation of minutiae.

The proposal’s features include “monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer’s point-of-sale system, and allowance for adjustments in tipping practices from year to year.”

Though the program is allegedly “voluntary,” those who comply would not be held liable to “rules that define tips as part of an employee’s pay” and would be permitted to implement policies “in accordance with the section of the tax law that requires employees to report tips to their employers.”

Bankman–Fried’s Uncontrolled Blabbing a ‘Gift’ to Federal Prosecutors

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Bankman–Fried’s Uncontrolled Blabbing a ‘Gift’ to Federal Prosecutors

(Headline USA) For federal prosecutors, disgraced Democrat donor Sam Bankman–Fried could be the gift that keeps on giving.

After the November collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2019, Bankman–Fried unexpectedly gave a series of interviews intended to present his version of events.

He was indicted in December and charged with perpetrating one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history—and he’s still talking, either in person or on the internet.

The atypical chattiness for a criminal defendant is likely causing Bankman–Fried’s attorneys to scratch their heads, or worse. Prosecutors can use any statements, tweets or other communications against him at his trial, which is scheduled for October.

“Prosecutors love when defendants shoot their mouths off,” said Daniel R. Alonso, a former federal prosecutor who is now a white-collar criminal defense attorney.

If Bankman–Fried’s public comments before trial can be proven false during the trial, it may undermine his credibility with a jury, Alonso said.

Bankman–Fried’s most immediate concern, however, is a recent private communication. Prosecutors say he sent an encrypted message over the Signal texting app on Jan. 15 to the general counsel of FTX US, a likely witness for the government.

Bankman–Fried will be back in a New York court Thursday, where a judge could impose new bail restrictions because of what could be seen as an attempt to influence a witness.

Before its collapse, FTX was the world’s second-largest crypto exchange and Bankman–Fried, 30, was its CEO and a billionaire several times over, at least on paper. Celebrities and politicians alike vouched for FTX and its founder, and Bankman–Fried was considered a leading figure in the crypto world.

However, the broad collapse of cryptocurrencies last year caused severe financial stress for numerous companies in the crypto universe, from lenders to exchanges to firms focused on investing in digital assets. FTX sought bankruptcy protection in November after customers pulled out their money in the crypto equivalent of a bank run.

Federal prosecutors have said Bankman–Fried devised “a scheme and artifice to defraud” FTX’s customers and investors right from FTX’s inception. They say he illegally diverted their money to cover expenses, debts and risky trades at Alameda Research, the crypto hedge fund he started in 2017, and to make lavish real estate purchases and large political donations.

In interviews and Twitter posts, Bankman–Fried has said he never intended to defraud anyone. He’s maintained that running FTX took up all his time and that he was unaware of the financial problems at the hedge fund until it was too late.

Those assertions are likely to be refuted by one of the government’s key witnesses. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda, has agreed to plead guilty for her role in FTX’s collapse and to testify against Bankman–Fried, her former boyfriend.

In a plea hearing in December, Ellison said she knew FTX had used billions in customer funds to make loans to Alameda and agreed with Bankman–Fried and others to take steps to conceal the nature of the loans.

Gary Wang, who co-founded FTX with Bankman–Fried, also struck a deal for cooperation. At his own plea hearing, Wang said that he made changes to computer code to enable FTX customer funds to be transferred to Alameda.

Another claim made often by Bankman–Fried is that he’s trying to help recover funds for FTX customers, but that FTX’s new management has cut him off and has taken steps, including filing for bankruptcy protection, that could inhibit customers from getting their money back.

For instance, Bankman–Fried says that when FTX collapsed, outside parties had made funding offers totaling billions of dollars, and if given a few weeks the company could have raised enough money “to make customers substantially whole.”

Instead, it was “strong-armed” into filing for bankruptcy protection by its main law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, a claim the firm denies.

FTX also has attempted to recoup its losses, including sending out a press release this week asking its political beneficiaries to return their donations. It is unclear how many have thus far complied, although several expressed their intention to give them to left-wing causes instead of returning them to the company.

Bankman–Fried has frequently taken issue with decisions made by FTX’s new CEO, John Ray. Bankman–Fried has often claimed that FTX’s U.S. operation, which was considerably smaller than the international operations, was solvent at the time of the bankruptcy filing, a contention that Ray disputes.

“I’m still waiting for him to finally admit that FTX US is solvent and give customers their money back,” Bankman–Fried tweeted on Jan. 19.

Bankman–Fried was scheduled to testify under oath in front of Congress in December with Ray, but that appearance was cancelled because of his arrest in the Bahamas, where FTX is based.

“The real risk Bankman–Fried runs in making public comments ‘explaining’ what happened is they could be seen as continuing efforts to mislead investors by regulators and prosecutors,” said Jeff Linehan, a former prosecutor in the financial crimes division of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. Linehan is now a criminal defense attorney.

Bankman–Fried’s comments at the time of FTX’s collapse could also come back to haunt him. On Nov. 7, as customers furiously demanded their money back, he tweeted “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.” He deleted the tweet the next day. On Nov. 11, FTX filed Chapter 11.

Through a spokesman, Bankman–Fried decline to comment for this article.

Some defendants will go through their entire legal ordeal without saying anything that isn’t first cleared by their attorneys. Even putting defendants on the witness stand at trial has long been seen by defense attorneys as a last-resort option because it opens them up to interrogation by prosecutors and often does more harm than good.

“As the prosecution prepares their case, it’s really important to figure out what the defense’s strategy could be, and a defense wants to keep that strategy under wraps as much as possible,” said Alonso, the former federal prosecutor.

Bankman–Fried faces the possibility of decades in prison if convicted on all counts.

Even if he were to agree to a plea bargain, a judge would have full discretion on what sentence to impose. If the judge does not believe Bankman–Fried is truly sorry for his actions, based partly on his public statements, he could ignore the prosecution’s recommendations and imposing a stricter sentence, legal experts say.

Before FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried had built up a gigantic public persona. He spoke often to reporters, testified in front of Congress, and appeared at conferences to advocate for cryptocurrencies and his firm.

He gave millions of dollars to Democrat political candidates—as well as thousands to Republicans—and advocated for charitable causes such as food issues in the Bahamas.

It could be difficult to give up that sort of public influence, Alonso said. “Some people simply can’t help themselves.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Maj. General: U.S. Army, Pacific Allies Getting Battle-Ready to Take on China

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Maj. General: U.S. Army, Pacific Allies Getting Battle-Ready to Take on China

(Headline USA) China’s incursion of U.S. airspace last week was the latest red flag that the trans-atlantic superpower is intentionally putting itself on a collision course that will result in military action.

But according to the U.S. military’s top brass, Americans have no reason to panic.

U.S. armed forces and their allies in Asia are ready for battle after years of joint combat exercises, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan said Wednesday, adding that Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine should serve as a warning to potential Asian aggressors like China and North Korea.

“I’m personally very buoyed by what I see by our allies and partners in this region and the way we’ve come together in response to aggression by the PRC, by North Korea to say, ‘We will not let that stand,’” Ryan said, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

U.S. treaty allies like the Philippines, Japan and Australia, among others, “have shown that they will band together, that they will not stand for aggression from these nations that have decided they want to change the world order out here,” said Ryan, who serves as commanding general of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii.

Although Asia has no counterpart to the Euro-centric NATO alliance, a network of U.S. treaty alliances and defense partnerships upholding the international order provides a regional safeguard, he told the Associated Press in an interview Wednesday from the Philippenes, where he was talking with Philippine counterparts ahead of two annual largescale combat exercises.

The war games are expected to include live-fire exercises and ground, sea and air assault maneuvers involving thousands of U.S. and Filipino troops in March and April.

The Philippines, America’s oldest treaty ally in Asia, used to host the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. It continues to allow larger numbers of visiting U.S. forces to stay in rotating batches, and to pre-position weapons and combat equipment in at least nine Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact.

Amid Chinese saber-rattling over the South China Sea—a resource-rich and busy waterway where Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also lay overlapping territorial claims—the Philppines’s decision to allow a broader American military presence was announced during a visit last week to Manila by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

China has frowned on combat exercises involving the Americans in coastal areas facing the region, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.

It has accused Washington of meddling in Asian disputes and dangerously militarizing the disputed territory by regularly deploying U.S. Navy warships and jet fighters there—and in the northern Luzon region, which lies across a narrow sea border from Taiwan.

While China has taken increasingly assertive actions to cement its territorial claims, Ryan said he hoped combat-readiness exercises would make potential aggressors think twice.

The U.S. and the Philippines have agreed to hold about 500 small and major combat exercises in 2023 and expand annual military drills following disruptions caused by two years of coronavirus lockdowns, according to Philippine military officials.

“That does provide some deterrent effect against an adversary in the region, who would look at that and say, ‘I don’t want to take a step that may cause a government, a politician, to decide to go because I don’t know that I can win if I’ve got to face that trained, ready force,’” Ryan said.

Military commanders say the joint exercises are not directed against any particular country, but Ryan said China’s increasingly aggressive actions were an alarming reality the region should brace for.

“Does the backdrop of PRC aggression enter our minds when we train? Absolutely,” he said—and, in the case of the Philippines, U.S. forces needed to be ready to fulfill their obligations under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.

“We feel duty-bound to ensure that the Philippines can maintain and will maintain their sovereignty,” Ryan said. “So aggression from the People’s Republic of China that makes our treaty ally uncomfortable makes us uncomfortable.”

The Philippines filed nearly 200 diplomatic protests in 2022 alone against China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea.

Asked if U.S. forces and their Asian allies were ready to respond if a major crisis similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine breaks out in the region, Ryan said, “Absolutely.”

“I’m very comfortable that we’re ready, but that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied,” said Ryan, who commands about 12,000 soldiers under his infantry division. “We can always get better.”

He said experts would be flown in from Hawaii to train American and Filipino army troops in jungle survival and combat tactics during the Salaknib, the first of two major combat-readiness exercises starting next month in the Philippines.

Ryan said America’s adversaries should consider political dialogue and diplomacy because “war is complicated … it’s violent, it can go a number of different ways.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin had found that out the hard way by underestimating American resolve to send at least $100 million in funding and weaponry to Ukraine, which does not have a mutual defense treaty with the U.S.

“We thought that Ukraine would quickly succumb to Russian military power,” Ryan said. “That didn’t happen. The most important reason in my view, by far, was the will of the Ukraine people to fight.”

It was also crucial that the United States and NATO had helped train Ukrainian troops and enhanced their capabilities to deal with security contingencies for years before Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, he said.

“I think our allies in the region value their sovereignty, value their freedom, value their independence. And no adversary should take that lightly,” Ryan said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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