Dangerous. Sassy. Unprecedented. Unexplored territory.

Reaction in the media world has been swift and severe over the issue of subpoenas of five New York Times journalists who reported on security issues related to the new Qatar-equipped Air Force One, a legal maneuver seen as a worrying escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to control and intimidate independent media.

“The subpoenas are an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations and have a chilling effect on the work of journalists across the country,” said Jodie Ginsberg, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Media advocates and analysts expressed dismay at the tactic, even after months in which news organizations that drew the ire of President Donald Trump have been attacked both in the courts and in the court of public opinion; media access to the corridors of power has been blocked; and federal agents searched the home of a Washington journalist.

“They have used the levers of power to intimidate and demonize professional journalists who report stories that are unfavorable to the administration’s desired narrative,” said Frank Sesno, former CNN White House bureau chief and now a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.

He called Friday’s subpoenas “dangerous and uncharted territory, but simply an extension of what we have seen from this administration and the president.”

“Don’t like a survey? Sue the Des Moines Register,” he said. “You don’t like the way an interview is edited? ’60 Minutes’ Sue.” Don’t like the coverage of the gifted Air Force One? Order the FBI to investigate and subpoena the journalists for what is, by the way, a public interest story.”

Some of the subpoenas were delivered to journalists at their homes, the Times said. Requested by Jay Clayton, the federal prosecutor in Manhattan, they seek to compel reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan this week.

The new plane in question, a gift from Qatar that the Trump administration spent $400 million to modernize and improve, entered service last week. But the Republican president used an older model Air Force One plane to leave a NATO summit in Türkiye.

The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the change had come at the behest of the Secret Service and that the newer plane lacked some of the advanced safety features of older planes, including anti-missile capabilities. On social media, Trump denied security concerns.

The subpoenas were issued after FBI Director Kash Patel and other Justice Department officials met at the White House on Friday to discuss the matter, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Times said the meeting lasted about eight hours.

The fact that the operation was carried out from the White House itself was particularly egregious to analysts like Sesno, who called the coordination “unprecedented.”

“This graphically illustrates the pressure and influence that the White House and the president have exerted on law enforcement, which is supposed to be independent and driven by facts, not politics,” he said.

The National Press Club called on the Justice Department to immediately withdraw the subpoenas.

“Every American should understand what is at stake,” Mark Schoeff Jr., the club’s president, said in a statement. “When federal agents arrive at journalists’ homes with subpoenas, this is no ordinary law enforcement action. It is an extraordinary assault on press freedom that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.”

Also expressing solidarity with Times journalists was the White House Correspondents’ Association, which, in less than two weeks, will hold its rescheduled dinner, and Trump plans to attend the event celebrating the First Amendment. The first dinner was thwarted when a shooter opened fire in what prosecutors say was an attempt to kill the president.

“The White House Correspondents’ Association stands with the New York Times reporters who were attacked for doing their work to defend the public’s right to know how their government operates,” said a statement from the group’s president, Weijia Jiang. “The WHCA condemns any acts of intimidation against journalists, including attempts to pressure them to reveal their sources.”

Trump’s animosity toward media outlets whose agenda runs counter to his is not new. But in his second presidential term, he has launched an escalation, often leveraging the federal government or attempting to do so. These efforts have taken place both in royal courts and in the court of public opinion.

The president has sued several news organizations whose coverage he doesn’t like. He also threatened to revoke television broadcast licenses. Its Federal Communications Commission chairman is seeking to penalize shows like ABC’s “The View,” where some hosts speak out against Trump, prompting the FCC to explore revoking his exemption from equal time rules.

The legal skirmishes include a growing dispute between the media and Trump’s Defense Department over journalists’ access to the Pentagon. The Times has filed two lawsuits over a policy requiring journalists to be accompanied by escorts at the military complex.

The White House has also fought with The Associated Press over the news organization’s refusal to follow Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico. And he has battled with The Wall Street Journal for reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to the president, including an article that described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper said bore Trump’s signature.

Last month, the Justice Department issued and then withdrew subpoenas seeking to compel journalists from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify before a grand jury, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Post confirmed that one of its journalists received a subpoena from the Trump administration as part of a broader crackdown on media leaks that in January also included the extraordinary measure of an FBI search of the home of another journalist at the newspaper and the seizure of her electronic devices. The media world was stunned by the search of the home of reporter Hannah Natanson, who was covering Trump’s transformation of the federal government.

The Times is now preparing for battle against what its lawyer David McCraw has called “this brazen act.”

In an internal memo seen by the AP, the paper’s executive editor, Joseph Kahn, criticized the subpoenas, praised the work of its journalists and said: “We hope to prevail. We have the best legal team in the business… The law protects news gatherers from this type of retaliatory abuse of prosecutorial power. It is essential that the courts reaffirm that protection and strike down this overreach. We are confident they will do so in this case.”

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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.