Jack Brennan

Jack Brennan is ObjectWire’s investigations reporter, covering the intersection of federal law, environmental regulation, and national security policy from Washington, D.C. His reporting focuses on how executive-branch decisions reshape statutory protections that took decades to build, using court filings, agency records, and congressional documents as primary sources.

Brennan’s inaugural major investigation documented the Trump administration’s March 2026 invocation of the Endangered Species Act’s never-before-used national security exemption clause, forcing the Endangered Species Committee — the “God Squad” — to convene for the first time since 1992 and vote unanimously to exempt all Gulf of Mexico oil drilling from ESA enforcement. The piece charted the three-week timeline from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s March 13 DOJ filing to the unanimous March 31 vote, and laid out the existential stakes for the 51 remaining Rice’s whales.

Brennan’s approach is forensic: he leads with what the documents say, identifies the named actors responsible, and reconstructs each decision in the order it was made. He does not speculate about motive when act and consequence are sufficient.

He operates out of the ObjectWire Investigations Desk. Tips and document leads can be directed to ObjectWire’s editorial contact channel.