Series on Pentagon leaks wins award in 2025 MRE Journalism Contest

Daniel Lippman is a White House and Washington reporter at POLITICO. He was previously a co-author of POLITICO’s Playbook and still writes the “Social Data” section of POLITICO New York Playbook.

Before joining POLITICO, he was a fellow covering environmental news for E&E Publishing and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has also interned for McClatchy Newspapers and Reuters. During a stint freelancing in 2013, he traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border to cover the impact of the Syrian civil war for The Huffington Post and CNN.com.

He graduated from The Hotchkiss School and from The George Washington University. He is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a rising leader of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Strategy Group and an International Strategy fellow at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative started by Eric and Wendy Schmidt.

Jack Detsch is a defense reporter at POLITICO, where he covers the Pentagon, the military services, and the combatant commands, looking into the movements of troops, planes, tanks, and personalities that shape power politics in Washington and around the globe.

He previously covered the Pentagon, national security, and cybersecurity for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, and the Christian Science Monitor, and has reported from 17 countries, including from a U.S.-run airbase in Somalia’s desert and from the cockpit of a Swedish CB90 fast assault craft racing through the Stockholm archipelago.

Jack was one of the first reporters to gain access to the International Donor Coordination Center set up by Western countries after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In 2019, while serving as a reporter at Al-Monitor, a global news organization covering the Middle East, he won the exemplary media award from the Forum on the Arms Trade for his coverage of the Trump administration’s policy toward Yemen.

Rachael Bade is POLITICO’s Capitol Bureau Chief and Senior Washington Columnist. Her work — including her column “Corridors” — dives deep into the shifting tides of power in Washington, illuminating the strong-arming, secret negotiations and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that shape policy, politics and governance.

Tapping a network of deep sources cultivated over 15 years in Washington, Bade specializes in telling the stories behind the news — the power plays on
Capitol Hill, or personal rivalries in the White House. Her articles often reveal how power is brokered, bartered, and battled for, offering readers compelling narratives about who’s up and who’s down — and why it matters.

Rachael spent four years writing the hallmark daily newsletter POLITICO Playbook, regularly breaking news on the latest fights over the direction of the Democratic Party, the effort to sideline Joe Biden during the 2024 campaign and Trump’s historic comeback. Before that, she covered Congress for almost a decade for POLITICO and The Washington Post, chronicling Trump’s remaking of the party and Democratic efforts to turn the tide against him
through two failed impeachments.

Bade is the author of the book “UNCHECKED: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” a scoopy narrative uncovering how Democrats under famed Speaker Nancy Pelosi, twice fumbled their efforts to oust the 45th president and laid the groundwork for his return
to power.

Rachael also serves as a contributing political correspondent for ABC News, where she appears regularly on ABC’s “This Week” and “Good Morning America.” She spent half-decade as a contributor on CNN, and has been a regular guest on the Sunday show circuit over the years.

A small-town, Ohio-native, Bade graduated from the University of Dayton with degrees in political science and communication. She’s the proud mom of a rambunctious toddler and is a recovering former classical ballet dancer.

Paul McLeary covers the Pentagon — the major players, overseas movements, personnel changes and policy shifts — for POLITICO. He previously covered the Pentagon, the armed services, and NATO for Foreign Policy, Defense News and Breaking Defense, and has embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Paul was in front on many of the hot-button issues in the U.S.-led effort to supply Ukraine with weapons, breaking news on internal White House and Pentagon negotiations over sending fighter planes and long-range weapons to Kyiv. In Afghanistan, he was the first reporter to get inside the secretive ODIN
program that targeted insurgents, and accompanied U.S. special operations forces training Syrian Kurds in northern Syria.