Dispatches on war,
power, and who pays the price

On the evening of May 13, 2026, more than a dozen gunshots were fired inside the Philippine Senate building in Pasay City. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms had entered the building. Journalists ran for cover. The Senate had been under lockdown for three days. The man at the center of the crisis: Senator Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa, former Philippine National Police chief under President Rodrigo Duterte and the primary architect of "Oplan Tokhang" — the police operation that produced thousands of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users and dealers, mostly poor Filipinos in urban slums, between 2016 and 2022. The International Criminal Court unsealed an arrest warrant against him on May 11, dated November 6, 2025, charging him as an "indirect co-perpetrator in the crime against humanity of murder." By Thursday morning, Dela Rosa had fled the Senate building. The ICC has now listed him as "at-large."

The scale of what is being prosecuted: Philippine government data acknowledges more than 6,000 people killed in official police anti-drug operations during Duterte's presidency. Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations estimate the true toll — including unreported "vigilante" killings carried out by police-aligned actors — at up to 30,000 deaths. The dead were overwhelmingly poor: residents of urban slums, low-level dealers, drug users, and bystanders, often shot in the streets and left for their families to find. The Davao Death Squad, which Duterte allegedly founded as Davao City mayor and which Dela Rosa was allegedly involved with as Davao police chief, provided the operational template that was later expanded nationally as "Tokhang." The ICC's pre-trial chamber found that Dela Rosa "controlled a structure of power" that "allowed him to direct and control the actions" of those carrying out the killings, and that he "necessarily knew about the operations and their scope."

The structural significance — international accountability operating against a US-allied government: Duterte was dramatically arrested at Manila's international airport in March 2025 and transferred to The Hague. On April 23, 2026, the ICC's pre-trial chamber unanimously confirmed all charges against him, committing him to trial. This is one of the rare cases where the international human rights accountability framework is functioning as designed — prosecuting state-sponsored violence by a national government against its own civilian population. The Philippines was an ICC signatory; Duterte withdrew the country from the court after the investigation began in 2019, but the ICC retains jurisdiction over crimes committed during the period of membership (2016–2019). The withdrawal mechanism was specifically designed to prevent states from escaping accountability by quitting the court after the alleged crimes occurred.

What's getting buried in US coverage: American outlets are covering the Dela Rosa story as "exotic Asian political drama" — the chase through Senate hallways, the gunshots, the protective custody. What is not being framed is what is structurally at stake: a state-sponsored mass killing campaign of poor citizens, prosecuted by an international court, with the principal political class of the country in active resistance to that prosecution. The contrast with US policy toward equivalent campaigns elsewhere — where the US either supports the perpetrators (Israel, Saudi Arabia, US-allied authoritarian regimes generally) or applies the framework selectively (Russia, but not the United States itself) — is the actual story. Bato Dela Rosa is on the run because the ICC's accountability mechanism works on smaller-state perpetrators. It does not work on larger-state perpetrators. The structural asymmetry is the framework the rest of this site has been documenting all week.

On May 13, 2026, the Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve by a vote of 54–45. This is the most partisan Fed chair confirmation in modern history — every previous Fed chair was confirmed with substantial bipartisan support, often by margins of 80+ votes. Only one Democrat, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, crossed the aisle to vote in favor. Warsh's confirmation is being covered as a personnel story; it is more accurately the formal end of a 75-year US institutional norm. The Federal Reserve's political independence — the structural feature that has insulated US monetary policy from short-term presidential demands since the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord — has been compromised, and the precedent set by the process matters more than the individual.

How the precedent was set: Trump waged a sustained pressure campaign against outgoing chair Jerome Powell throughout 2025, publicly demanding rate cuts and threatening to fire Powell. The Department of Justice, under US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro, opened a criminal investigation of Powell tied to testimony Powell gave to Congress about cost overruns on a Fed headquarters renovation project. The investigation was widely viewed by financial observers as politically motivated. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis held up Warsh's confirmation for weeks demanding the DOJ drop the investigation; the investigation was dropped, though Pirro stated she may reopen it. The mechanism is clear: the federal government's prosecutorial apparatus was used to pressure the central bank chair out of office in service of monetary policy demands. This is the central architectural innovation of the Trump II administration applied to a new domain.

The unusual Powell holdover: Powell's term as chair ends Friday, but Powell is not leaving the Fed. He is staying on the Board of Governors — a position he holds until 2028 — specifically to maintain influence over monetary policy and to safeguard the institution's structure. This is the first time in nearly 80 years that an outgoing Fed chair has remained on the board rather than departing. Powell stated explicitly that he will not leave the board until the DOJ investigation is "fully resolved with transparency and finality." The outgoing Fed chair is staying in place as a structural counterweight to Trump's selected replacement. This is itself a sign of how serious the institutional damage is — Powell is using the only remaining tool he has to constrain political capture of the Fed.

Why this matters in real time: Inflation just hit a three-year high. Headline PPI rose 1.4% in April, the largest monthly gain since March 2022; year-over-year PPI is up 6%. The Iran war has produced an energy shock that is feeding through to consumer prices. The Federal Open Market Committee is divided, with three members signaling their next move could be a rate increase rather than a cut. Trump publicly demands rate cuts. Warsh has called for "regime change" at the Fed. The collision between political demands and economic conditions is now scheduled to play out inside a central bank whose independence has been formally compromised. If Warsh cuts rates against the FOMC's inflation-fighting majority, the precedent is institutional. If he defers to the FOMC's professional judgment, Trump will pressure him publicly — and the DOJ tool that was used against Powell remains available.

What's getting buried: The Warsh confirmation is being covered as a business/finance story rather than as a structural-political story. Major outlets are treating "the Fed's independence is at risk" as a hypothetical future concern rather than as a documented present fact. The DOJ pressure campaign against Powell, the criminal investigation that was opened and then dropped to clear the path for Warsh, and the most-partisan-vote-in-history framing are all in the public record. Central bank independence is one of the foundational structural features of modern democratic capitalism. Its compromise in the United States — the issuer of the world's reserve currency — has consequences that extend far beyond US monetary policy. The full implications are not yet visible, but the institutional damage is now permanent in the historical record.

French intelligence agencies are investigating an obscure Israeli firm called BlackCore for orchestrating a coordinated disinformation campaign that targeted three candidates from La France Insoumise (LFI) — France's hard-left, pro-Palestinian party — ahead of March 2026 municipal elections, according to Reuters reporting published Wednesday. The targeted candidates: Marseille mayoral candidate Sébastien Delogu, Toulouse contender François Piquemal, and Roubaix candidate David Guiraud. The campaign deployed deceptive websites and social media accounts alleging criminal behavior, fake "blog" sites accusing candidates of sexual misconduct, QR codes pointing to disinformation pages placed physically around Marseille, and disparaging digital advertising. Meta confirmed to Reuters that the disinformation network "originated in Israel" and "primarily targeted France." Google and TikTok independently identified aspects of the same operation across their platforms.

What BlackCore is: BlackCore described itself on its now-deleted website and LinkedIn page as "an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare," providing governments and political campaigns with "cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives." Reuters reviewed BlackCore documents in which the company claimed credit for a separate social media operation carried out on behalf of an African government. The firm's website and LinkedIn presence were taken offline after Reuters began its investigation. Reuters could not independently establish who owns BlackCore, where it is physically based, or find any reference to the company in Israeli corporate records — which is itself the relevant structural fact. Israel's Foreign Ministry told Reuters it was "not aware" of BlackCore.

The broader ecosystem this is part of: BlackCore is the latest documented instance of a well-known pattern: Israeli private intelligence and information-warfare firms operating globally to influence elections, smear journalists, and undermine pro-Palestinian or human-rights-aligned political actors. The pattern includes Black Cube (operations against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, against critics of the Iran nuclear deal), NSO Group (Pegasus spyware used against journalists and dissidents worldwide), Psy-Group (election interference operations), Team Jorge (disinformation services to politicians globally, exposed in 2023). The ecosystem is staffed substantially by former IDF Unit 8200 personnel — Israel's signals intelligence unit, equivalent to the US NSA — who move into private firms after military service. The Israeli state's tolerance for this ecosystem, and the consistent direction of its target selection (pro-Palestinian politicians, human rights advocates, journalists critical of Israel) is the structural pattern.

Why this story matters now: The targeted candidates are all from a French political party that is pro-Palestinian and critical of Israeli operations in Gaza. The disinformation operation against them aligns with documented Israeli state interests. LFI retains 10–15% support in French polling and could plausibly reach the second round of the April 2027 French presidential election. With the far-right National Rally widely expected to make the runoff, French centrists are already discussing a potential far-right-vs-hard-left runoff. An Israeli-origin disinformation operation degrading LFI's electoral prospects shapes which French political faction is positioned to compete with the far right. The structural significance: this is not theoretical concern about foreign election interference. This is a Western democratic ally of the United States documenting that an Israeli firm meddled in its democratic processes, with platform companies (Meta, Google, TikTok) confirming the operation's origin.

What's getting buried: US coverage of this story is essentially zero outside of Reuters' original wire report. The framing of "Israeli firm interfering in Western democracy" does not survive the typical US editorial filters that frame Israeli actions sympathetically or omit them. Compare to coverage of equivalent Russian or Chinese interference operations, which receive sustained mainstream attention. The same operation, conducted by a Russian firm against a French right-wing party, would be front-page news for weeks. The selective application of the "foreign election interference" framework — applied to adversaries, omitted for allies — is the actual story.