The White House is gearing up for a political fight as a new, more diverse group of lawmakers prepares to investigate Trump officials, while a web of overlapping money and influence stories complicates the picture for anyone in power right now.

• Trump's team is staffing up lawyers and planning to resist subpoenas, and is even threatening to investigate the investigators once new members of Congress take office.
• Kushner is now shuttling between meetings with Putin and Zelensky, continuing the administration's hands-on role in Russia-Ukraine diplomacy.
• Several ethics-adjacent stories broke the same day: a robotics startup backed by Eric Trump is in talks to supply Israel's military, a State Department official took a billionaire-funded trip, and Rubio has been taking costly military flights tied to personal travel.
• In Michigan, voters chose to limit utility companies' political spending, and the utilities are now suing to overturn that decision, a fight over corporate money in politics.
• A contested impeachment-related vote in the House saw several Democrats miss it, some citing traffic, while records show a lobbying-linked event overlapped with the vote; this is feeding an internal Democratic Party debate over the influence of pro-Israel donor money versus a more progressive wing.

Outlook: Expect the investigation fight to intensify once new members of Congress are seated in January, with money-in-politics and foreign-influence questions likely to stay in the spotlight.