Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche has publicly defended the issuance of grand jury subpoenas to journalists as part of probes into leaks of classified information, stating that anyone with knowledge of illegal leaks "should not be surprised" to receive one. His remarks followed a report by The Wall Street Journal that it had received subpoenas targeting records of reporters covering the US war against Iran — a move the paper's parent company, Dow Jones, condemned as "an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering." The development marks an escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on media leaks, underscored by the Justice Department's earlier decision to revoke a Biden-era policy limiting the use of subpoenas against journalists, and a January FBI raid on a Washington Post reporter's home.