Tensions between Republicans and Democrats over the investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election intensified Sunday, with President Trump demanding to know why his campaign is under federal scrutiny while his former opponent Hillary Clinton is not.

The president’s latest outburst over the inquiry led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III surfaced on Twitter as his administration braced for the possibility that the first batch of charges in the case could be publicly announced as soon as Monday. CNN reported that a federal grand jury had approved an indictment, although details of the possible charges and the name of a defendant remained unclear.

Trump issued four tweets over 24 minutes, attacking the Mueller probe as unfair and citing various Clinton controversies that he said warranted investigation.

“Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion,’ which doesn’t exist,” the president said. “The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”

Later in the morning, Trump added: “All of this ‘Russia’ talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!”

On Sunday talk shows, Republicans rallied around Trump and questioned how CNN could have received information about secret grand jury proceedings.

“There are very, very strict laws on grand jury secrecy, so depending on who leaked this to CNN, that’s a criminal violation, potentially,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a longtime friend of Trump’s, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “For us to have confidence in this process, we’ve got to make sure that the grand jury process remains confidential, remains secret, so that the special counsel can work effectively to be able to get to the bottom of all that he’s looking into.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) cast doubt on the objectivity of Mueller’s team, noting that the prosecutor’s staff includes “a lot of individuals, attorneys who played in politics, who’ve given money on the Democratic side.” Of the eight attorneys on the team who have been publicly identified, four made donations to Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Clinton.

“This president won the election solely on the idea that he connected with the American people. No other influence involved,” McCarthy said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But the idea of what I’ve watched, of what the Democrats have been doing, it sure raises a lot of questions.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, came to Mueller’s defense and said that he doesn’t agree with Republicans who are calling for Mueller to resign or stop his investigation.

“I would encourage my Republican friends — give the guy a chance to do his job,” Gowdy said on Fox News Sunday. “The result will be known by the facts, by what he uncovers. . . . I would say give the guy a chance to do his job.”

Democratic lawmakers mostly stayed out of the Sunday fray after a week in which Clinton’s 2016 campaign came under fresh scrutiny. The campaign funded political opposition research into Trump that helped create a highly publicized “dossier” on the Republican candidate and fueled some allegations now under scrutiny by Mueller.

The 35-page dossier is composed of 17 memos containing raw intelligence, some of it highly salacious and not independently confirmed. It relies on Kremlin-linked sources and alleges that the Russian government had been trying to support Trump’s candidacy while gathering compromising information that could be used as blackmail. The dossier was published in full by BuzzFeed in January.

It’s unclear how much the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid for the opposition research by Fusion GPS, a Washington firm that conducts investigations for private clients. The Clinton campaign paid $5.6 million in legal fees to a law firm from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since November 2015. It’s impossible to tell from the filings how much of that work was for other legal matters and how much of it related to Fusion GPS.

Trump tweeted Sunday morning that the dossier, which he called “Clinton made Fake Dossier,” could have cost as much as $12 million, although he did not explain how he reached that number.

Compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, the dossier mirrors a separate conclusion reached by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election in an effort to bolster Trump and harm Clinton, such as through hacking the DNC and distributing materials to WikiLeaks to publish at key moments.

Fusion GPS, which hired Steele to gather information, was first employed to investigate Trump during the Republican primaries by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that receives financial support from billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer, according to two people familiar with Singer. The Beacon said in a statement that its research ended before Fusion GPS hired Steele and that none of the research that it commissioned is included in the dossier.

In April 2016, an attorney representing Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS, which then hired Steele. Brian Fallon, a former spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said he learned about Steele and the dossier after the election. People familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that the Clinton campaign and the DNC did not direct Steele’s activities.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday that “a lot” of the information in the dossier has been corroborated.

“I certainly would have liked to know who paid for it earlier, but nonetheless, that’s just one factor to be considered,” Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “It doesn’t answer the ultimate question, which is: How much of the work is accurate? How much of it is true? And my colleagues don’t seem particularly interested in that question, but that is really the most important question for the American people.”

Schiff said he has not been told anything about any impending indictments in Mueller’s investigation, noting that such notification would not have been appropriate.

Trump also tweeted Sunday about Clinton’s involvement in what he called the “Uranium to Russia deal,” demanding that the matter receive greater scrutiny.

The 2010 deal approved by the Obama administration while Clinton was secretary of state allowed a Russian nuclear energy agency to acquire a controlling stake in a Canadian-based company that had mining licenses for about 20 percent of U.S. uranium extraction capacity. The company cannot export the uranium.

Earlier this month, House and Senate Republican leaders announced they would investigate the uranium deal, and the House Oversight Committee launched a probe into how the FBI investigated Clinton during the campaign. In the latter investigation, Republicans say they want to know why then-FBI Director James B. Comey publicly announced that the bureau was investigating Clinton but waited months before making a similar announcement about its inquiries into the Trump campaign.

Ed O’Keefe and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

And now all this nasty weather has a name.

The National Hurricane Center released its 5 p.m. advisory about 25 minutes early Saturday to call it Tropical Storm Philippe. The depression that has been soaking central and western Cuba and spreading rain and thunderstorms northward across the Florida Keys and South Florida, now has sustained winds of 40 mph.

The storm is moving north at 29 mph and the forecast cone has shifted a bit west, putting South Florida into the cone of concern. On the forecast track, the center of Philippe is predicted to move off of the northern coast of Cuba and into the Florida Straits this evening. The storm will then move across the Florida Keys or the southern tip of the Florida peninsula overnight, and across the northwestern Bahamas Sunday morning, the center said in its advisory.

The tropical storm force winds are on the east end of the storm.

While the system was still a depression Saturday afternoon, it spawned a small, brief tornado that touched down just northeast of the intersection of Bird Road and Southwest 97th Avenue in Miami.

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Tropical Storm watch for parts of coastal South Florida as unnamed storm approaches

The coastal area from Golden Beach at the Miami-Dade/Broward county line all the way down to Craig Key was placed under Tropical Storm Watch as Tropical Depression No. 18 remains on its path to Cuba, South Florida and the Bahamas.

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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for a military buildup against the threat from the North, and Japan sits on a stockpile of nuclear material that could power an arsenal of 6,000 weapons. Last Sunday, he won a commanding majority in parliamentary elections, fueling his hopes of revising the nation’s pacifist Constitution.

This brutal calculus over how to respond to North Korea is taking place in a region where several nations have the material, the technology, the expertise and the money to produce nuclear weapons.

Beyond South Korea and Japan, there is already talk in Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam about whether it makes sense to remain nuclear-free if others arm themselves — heightening fears that North Korea could set off a chain reaction in which one nation after another feels threatened and builds the bomb.

In a recent interview, Henry A. Kissinger, one of the few nuclear strategists from the early days of the Cold War still living, said he had little doubt where things were headed.

“If they continue to have nuclear weapons,” he said of North Korea, “nuclear weapons must spread in the rest of Asia.”

“It cannot be that North Korea is the only Korean country in the world that has nuclear weapons, without the South Koreans trying to match it. Nor can it be that Japan will sit there,” he added. “So therefore we’re talking about nuclear proliferation.”

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Such fears have been raised before, in Asia and elsewhere, without materializing, and the global consensus against the spread of nuclear weapons is arguably stronger than ever.

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But North Korea is testing America’s nuclear umbrella — its commitment to defend its allies with nuclear weapons if necessary — in a way no nation has in decades. Similar fears of abandonment in the face of the Soviet Union’s growing arsenal helped lead Britain and France to go nuclear in the 1950s.

President Trump, who leaves Nov. 3 for a visit to Asia, has intensified these insecurities in the region. During his presidential campaign, he spoke openly of letting Japan and South Korea build nuclear arms even as he argued they should pay more to support the American military bases there.

“There is going to be a point at which we just can’t do this anymore,” he told The New York Times in March 2016. Events, he insisted, were pushing both nations toward their own nuclear arsenals anyway.

Mr. Trump has not raised that possibility in public since taking office. But he has rattled the region by engaging in bellicose rhetoric against North Korea and dismissing talks as a “waste of time.”

In Seoul and Tokyo, many have already concluded that North Korea will keep its nuclear arsenal, because the cost of stopping it will be too great — and they are weighing their options.

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Capability to Build the Bomb

Long before North Korea detonated its first nuclear device, several of its neighbors secretly explored going nuclear themselves.

Japan briefly considered building a “defensive” nuclear arsenal in the 1960s despite its pacifist Constitution. South Korea twice pursued the bomb in the 1970s and 1980s, and twice backed down under American pressure. Even Taiwan ran a covert nuclear program before the United States shut it down.

Today, there is no question that both South Korea and Japan have the material and expertise to build a weapon.

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All that is stopping them is political sentiment and the risk of international sanctions. Both nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but it is unclear how severely other countries would punish two of the world’s largest economies for violating the agreement.

South Korea has 24 nuclear reactors and a huge stockpile of spent fuel from which it can extract plutonium — enough for more than 4,300 bombs, according to a 2015 paper by Charles D. Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

Japan once pledged never to stockpile more nuclear fuel than it can burn off. But it has never completed the necessary recycling and has 10 tons of plutonium stored domestically and another 37 tons overseas.

“We keep reminding the Japanese of their pledge,” said Ernest J. Moniz, chief executive of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and an energy secretary in the Obama administration, noting that it would take years if not decades for Japan to consume its fissile material because almost all its nuclear plants have remained offline since the 2011 Fukushima accident.

China, in particular, has objected to Japan’s stockpile, warning that its traditional rival is so advanced technologically that it could use the material to quickly build a large arsenal.

Analysts often describe Japan as a “de facto” nuclear state, capable of building a weapon within a year or two. “Building a physical device is not that difficult anymore,” said Tatsujiro Suzuki, former deputy chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.

Japan already possesses long-range missile technology, he added, but would need some time to develop more sophisticated communications and control systems.

South Korea may be even further along, with a fleet of advanced missiles that carry conventional warheads. In 2004, the government disclosed that its scientists had dabbled in reprocessing and enriching nuclear material without first informing the International Atomic Energy Agency as required by treaty.

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“If we decide to stand on our own feet and put our resources together, we can build nuclear weapons in six months,” said Suh Kune-yull, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University. “The question is whether the president has the political will.”

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In Seoul, a Rising Call for Arms

President Moon Jae-in has been firm in his opposition to nuclear weapons. He insists that building them or reintroducing American ones to South Korea would make it even more difficult to persuade North Korea to scrap its own.

Though Mr. Moon has received high approval ratings since his election in May, his view is increasingly a minority one.

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Calls for nuclear armament used to be dismissed as chatter from South Korea’s nationalist fringe. Not anymore. Now people often complain that South Korea cannot depend on the United States, its protector of seven decades.

The opposition Liberty Korea party called on the United States to reintroduce tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea in August after the North tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that appeared capable of reaching the mainland United States.

“If the U.N. Security Council can’t rein in North Korea with its sanctions, we will have no option but to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty,” Won Yoo-chul, a party leader, said in September.

Given the failure of sanctions, threats and negotiations to stop North Korea, South Koreans are increasingly convinced the North will never give up its nuclear weapons. But they also oppose risking a war with a military solution.

Most believe the Trump administration, despite its tough talk, will ultimately acquiesce, perhaps settling for a freeze that allows the North to keep a small arsenal. And many fear that would mean giving the North the ultimate blackmail tool — and a way to keep the United States at bay.

“The reason North Korea is developing a hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles is not to go to war with the United States,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute near Seoul. “It’s to stop the Americans from intervening in armed skirmishes or full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula.”

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The closer the North gets to showing it can strike the United States, the more nervous South Koreans become about being abandoned. Some have asked whether Washington will risk the destruction of an American city by intervening, for example, if the North attempts to occupy a border island, as its soldiers have practiced.

For many in South Korea, the solution is a homegrown nuclear deterrent.

“If we don’t respond with our own nuclear deterrence of some kind, our people will live like nuclear hostages of North Korea,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former presidential secretary for security strategy.

With nuclear weapons of its own, the South would gain leverage and could force North Korea back to the bargaining table, where the two sides could whittle down their arsenals through negotiations, some hawks argue.

But given the risks of going nuclear, others say Seoul should focus on persuading Washington to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons.

“The redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons would be the surest way” to deter North Korea, Defense Minister Song Young-moo said last month, but he added that it would be difficult to get Washington to agree to that.

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In Tokyo, Cautious Debate

The discussion in Japan has been more subdued than in South Korea, no surprise after 70 years of public education about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But Japan has periodically considered developing nuclear weapons every decade since the 1960s.

In 2002, a top aide to Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister then, caused a furor by suggesting Japan might one day break with its policy of never building, possessing or allowing nuclear arms on its territory.

North Korea has reopened that question.

Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister seen as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Abe, has argued that Japan needs to debate its nuclear policy given the threat from North Korea.

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Mr. Abe has stopped short of calling for a re-evaluation of the country’s position on nuclear weapons. But he has increased military spending and echoed Mr. Trump’s hawkish position against the North.

Mr. Abe’s administration has already determined that nuclear weapons would not be prohibited under the Constitution if maintained only for self-defense.

The Japanese public is largely opposed to nuclear weapons with polls indicating fewer than one in 10 support nuclear armament.

But Japan’s relations with South Korea have long been strained, and if Seoul armed itself, those numbers could shift.

Some analysts say the discussion is aimed at getting additional reassurance from Washington. “We always do that when we become a little upset about the credibility of the extended U.S. deterrence,” said Narushige Michishita, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

Tobias Harris, a Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence, a political risk consultancy, said Japan would rethink its position on nuclear weapons if it suspects the United States would let it down.

“We’re kind of in uncharted waters as far as this goes,” he said. “It’s hard to know exactly what the threshold is that will lead the Japanese public’s switch to flip.”

Correction: October 28, 2017

An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of plutonium Japan stores overseas. It is 37 tons, not 37 million tons.

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