Today brings a plethora of challenging news for Michael Steele, new chairman of the RNC.

Unnamed sources tell Taegan Goddard that there will be a no-confidence vote in Michael Steele shortly after the special election in New York’s 20th congressional district on March 31. Yesterday there was a report that Steele rivals would seek to replace him if the Republican candidate lost what was seen as a quite winnable race.

Politico’s Mike Allen is roughly as skeptical as I was yesterday, but says that senior Republicans will be watching Steele’s performance in the first half of this year carefully. With former Katon Dawson backer and North Carolina RNC member Ada Fischer already calling for Steele’s resignation, it’s possible to see someone calling the vote of no confidence; gathering a majority who would back a change at the top is a much higher bar to clear.

Finally, someone in high-level Republican circles expressed a worry to me about the FBI investigation into the use of funds in Steele’s 2006 Senate run referred to in a Washington Post piece a few weeks ago. I called up the Baltimore FBI office and asked them about Steele’s comment that the FBI’s discussion with his sister was “winding” down its investigation:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say it’s been cleared up, but the Washington Post also reports that federal agents have contacted your sister just in the last few days.
STEELE: And that is for purposes of closing out this — closing out this matter, because, once the judge — once the judge did not apply or did not think that this was credible, in terms of reducing this gentlemen’s sentence, the FBI is now in the position of winding this thing . . .

Special Agent Richard Wolf, the field office’s media coordinator, said he wouldn’t characterize the state of any investigation with Steele, but said, “A lot of times these things don’t wind down quickly and easily . . . If we close a case, we may tell the figures involved, but we don’t necessarily issue a press release – it just kind of slowly dies down.”