When FBI agents showed up at the homes of New York Times reporters on the evening of Friday, July 10, it was unsettling to say the least.

Times reporter Julian E. Barnes was at home with his wife Katherine Marsh and their elder son watching the movie “The Sheep Detectives” when the knock on the door came. The agents delivered subpoenas demanding Barnes testify before a grand jury.

“When something like this happens, it’s very frightening,” Marsh told NPR’s David Folkenflik. “You almost feel like you’re being treated as an enemy of the state and we’re just reporters and reporters’ families.”

This afternoon, NYT attorneys and government prosecutors will be in court for a key hearing. President Trump’s Justice Department will likely ask US District Judge Arun Subramanian to uphold the subpoenas – and force the reporters to cough up their anonymous sources – while the NYT will argue that the subpoenas are an appalling First Amendment violation.

“They were issued in a bad faith effort to harass and intimidate the journalists, The Times, and the news media more generally,” part of the Trump administration’s “escalating campaign against the press,” the NYT stated in a motion to the judge.

The government’s response: The subpoenas are part of a crucial “national security investigation,” i.e., an intense hunt for whoever leaked to The Times.

Before going any further, let’s just refresh the collective memory about the reasons for the leak and the probe.

This one is really personal for Trump.

The president was determined to fly on the new Qatari-gifted plane ASAP. Experts inside the government had serious concerns that the new plane was not as secure as the old ones used as Air Force One. Trump started using the Qatari-gifted plane anyway. But when Trump was attending a NATO summit in Turkey, a country bordering Iran, it was decided that he would switch back to one of the old planes for his flight home.

Government sources told the Times, CNN and other news outlets what was self-evident: Security concerns drove the decision. Those sources contradicted the president, who had claimed on Truth Social that the Qatari-gifted plane was flown ahead to England’s Mildenhall Air Force Base to give US service members “a chance to tour the aircraft.”

He later doubled down on that dubious cover story, saying the tour was “per the entire Base’s request” and sharing a photo of people posing in front of the new plane.

Privately, Trump “seethed over reporting on the plane’s security deficiencies,” CNN has reported, “and his government has moved aggressively to investigate who talked to reporters about them.”

To me, this story is about Trump’s dishonesty, and the leak hunt that transpires inside his government when people contradict him. I’d also note that in his recent comments about the Qatari-gifted plane, he seemed to be “acknowledging the security concerns are real.”

For the record, government prosecutors say (in a motion to the judge) that it’s about “potential leaks of classified or national defense information” at a time when the president, “senior officials, and reporters were flying in foreign airspace during a time of hostilities with a foreign adversary that has made clear its intent to harm the President and U.S. interests.”

Folkenflik’s NPR story is an excellent overview of the arguments, including the NYT’s view that the DOJ “has violated its own policies to pursue subpoenas from reporters as a last resort.”

Soon we’ll know more about how Judge Subramanian assesses the situation. It is unclear if the judge will rule immediately.

Up next: Another story about leaks that helped the public learn more about how their taxpayer dollars are being spent…

MS NOW published a sensational story last week about tension between VP JD Vance and his Secret Service agents who protect his family. The headline: “Vance’s security detail ‘fed up’ with hastily arranged personal and family travel requests.”

It’s easy to imagine a furious reaction to leaks about such a sensitive relationship. One White House official described the leaks about the VP’s movements as “treasonous” to CNN’s Kristen Holmes and said Vance and his family felt uneasy about their protective detail after the story came out.

Last night, Holmes and Josh Campbell published this scoop: A Secret Service agent “has been put on administrative leave after being suspected of leaking information.” The agency confirmed it this morning and said “any conduct that potentially threatens the safety of a protectee will not be tolerated.”

As always in these cases, I’ll just urge you to read the original MS NOW story, because it’s full of remarkable detail…

The next fight in California et al v. Paramount is about how the preliminary injunction phase should play out. A hearing is slated for August 3, which is even sooner than Paramount proposed. The company is now asking for a three-day evidentiary hearing — a mini-trial — the week of August 17 or 24.

A mini-trial would enable Paramount to present more evidence and push back harder on the state AGs’ market definitions. (And if the judge says no, that might embolden Paramount to tell an appeals court that it was denied a “full and fair hearing.”)

The states have not yet responded to Paramount’s proposal. Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America “filed its own motion for a preliminary injunction as part of its separate lawsuit” and wants to align with the states, Deadline’s Ted Johnson writes.

>> Paramount has secured EU regulatory approval for the deal. A Paramount statement said “the conclusions reached by the European Commission directly refute key assumptions that underpin the state AGs’ complaint.”

>> Spencer Pratt released a “lengthy video rant” assailing Gavin Newsom and Rob Bonta for challenging Paramount–WBD.

>> In yesterday’s edition we featured the WSJ editorial board’s criticism of the state AG case. Here’s a very different view, from David Dayen, editor of The American Prospect: He argues “the pressures on Paramount to pull out of a deal that may be losing significant traction are only going to grow.”

The state AGs suing to block Paramount–WBD are following the same playbook they successfully used to challenge the Nexstar–Tegna deal. Yesterday, they accused Nexstar of violating the preliminary injunction in that case. Nexstar said in response that it “has scrupulously complied with the court’s hold-separate order.” Now this will be back before the court…

When Trump said last week that NBC and ABC not airing his unusual prime-time address “should mean a revocation of their licenses,” it was only a matter of time before FCC chair Brendan Carr would weigh in.

Carr said at a press conference yesterday that ABC’s choice will surely come up during the FCC’s review of ABC’s eight station licenses. He invoked the vague “public interest” standard and said he personally thinks broadcasters should carry presidential speeches. (The speech was widely accessible, including on NBC and ABC’s streaming and social platforms.)

It fell to lone Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez to remind everyone that “it is not for the FCC to tell broadcasters how to make their editorial decisions or what content to place on their networks or their local broadcast stations.” The aforementioned Todd Spangler has more here…

New this morning: “The European Union has fined Google $1 billion for breaching rules designed to promote competition in digital services, the first time the company has been penalized under the bloc’s landmark Digital Markets Act,” CNN’s Hanna Ziady reports here.

To put that in perspective, yesterday Google’s parent Alphabet released second quarter earnings and reported $119.8 billion in total revenue for the quarter…