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“We’ve seen indications that Mueller is getting close to the end here,” says Susan Hennessey, of the Lawfare blog , about Robert Mueller’s investigation. “That’s either good news for the president because, this is all about to wrap up, or it’s really bad news for the president because it’s all about to come crashing down.”

What are those indications? They include the latest flurry of legal proceedings involving people central to the investigation, like Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. Hennessey predicts that the investigation will likely wrap up by early spring.

If that’s right, much of the news in the next few months will be dominated by Russia. And I think that’s one reason why congressional Republicans seem more willing to defy Trump — as they have in recent days on Yemen, a few judicial nominations and Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. “The Trump White House is very much under siege,” Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes write in an Atlantic piece that walks through the White House’s problems.