The risk to Mueller and Rosenstein is not new. It’s been obvious for a long time that Trump could wake up any day and decide to fire either or both of them. But the combination of the mounting investigative pressure on the president and his open contemplation of their dismissal makes the concern more acute. If the confrontation is upon us, or if it has grown imminent, the immediate question is whether the president will be content to let the investigation take its course—or whether he will use the powers of his office to frustrate it. And if he chooses the latter course, will our political system endeavor to stop him? While some congressional Republicans have pushed back against the president’s latest threats—Sen. Chuck Grassley declared that dismissing Mueller would be “suicide,” and Sen. Thom Tillis has reportedly begun lobbying the Senate Judiciary Committee to take up his legislation protecting the special counsel—others responded with little more than shrugs.

To make the whole picture more unsettling, the confrontation is brewing against a backdrop of increasing policy instability. National security officials are dropping like flies. The most recent casualty is Tom Bossert, the president’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, who was removed Tuesday morning in an apparent power play by incoming national security adviser John Bolton. Bossert has been a loyal servant of the president. He was also an establishment figure whose substantive views on national security matters are refreshingly conventional. His removal comes as the administration contemplates how to respond to the latest chemical weapons attack in Syria, and it extends the pattern of staff disruption that has left the administration shorthanded when dealing with the sort of major issues that arise in a world that isn’t getting less dangerous. In other words, in the past 24 hours the White House has not merely taken a few steps closer to a major confrontation with the Justice Department and the special counsel but has also made sure that the government is badly positioned to handle security crises that may erupt in tandem with that confrontation.