Kevin McCarthy got physical on Tuesday with one of the conservative lawmakers who voted to oust him, according to Rep. Tim Burchett, who accused the former speaker of elbowing him in a Capitol hallway.

Burchett told reporters that McCarthy elbowed him in the back as he was speaking with a reporter and that the Tennessee Republican chased after him: “I ran after McCarthy and I said, ‘What’d you do that for?’ He acted like, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.'”

Burchett had yelled back: “Hey Kevin, have some guts.” He also called McCarthy a “jerk,” an exchange witnessed by POLITICO.

The Tennessee Republican told reporters after the incident: “He needs to go back to Southern California” and “I can still feel it it … It was a clean shot to the kidney.”

He would not push any effort to censure McCarthy, Burchett said, but he said they could settle differences in “the parking lot” and that “it would be a very short fistfight.” He noted McCarthy still retains a security detail and likened the jab to “a guy who throws a rock over the fence when he’s a kid and runs home and hides behind his mom’s skirt.”

McCarthy denied that he elbowed Burchett to CNN: “I didn’t shove or elbow him, it’s a tight hallway.”

The episode encapsulates the lingering bad blood between the former GOP leader who was ousted from the speakership last month at the hands of Burchett and seven other House Republicans. McCarthy’s allies are convinced that the effort to eject him, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), was largely based on personal grievances, which Gaetz has denied. And this latest episode is a further sign McCarthy is still angry over the episode.

The episode quickly attracted other attention on Capitol Hill, with Gaetz calling the move “weak” and “pathetic.”

“This is wild. McCarthy resorting to pushing people in the halls. What a weak, pathetic, husk of a man,” Gaetz tweeted.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Hakeem Jeffries won’t publicly say that Democrats plan to — once again — bail out the GOP speaker. But many of his members are privately prepared to do just that.

Inside a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday, Jeffries outlined the various ways that Speaker Mike Johnson’s stopgap spending plan is a win for Democrats, though he didn’t directly tell them how to vote on it later Tuesday. Most importantly, he said, there are no spending cuts and no “poison pill” add-ons.

As of now, Jeffries and his leadership team aren’t formally whipping their members to support the GOP’s shutdown-averting spending bill, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions, which is scheduled for a floor vote Tuesday afternoon. Still, several Democratic members acknowledged to POLITICO that their party is prepared to put up the lion’s share of the votes. And with dozens of House Republicans declaring they won’t support the bill without steep spending cuts, that’ll mean Democrats will, once again, carry the load for GOP leaders.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Jeffries said he and Johnson had several conversations over the last few days. He declined to comment on them, though he added that he anticipates speaking more with him today. Jeffries said the caucus discussion was still “ongoing” but acknowledged the funding patch was free of extraneous provisions that could sap Democratic support.

Multiple Democrats privately predicted the party’s support could be nearly as high as the last short-term funding bill in September, where all but one House Democrat backed the bill.

In another sign of the Democrats’ support for the measure, even Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, cracked open the door to backing the legislation.

“I think those are very significant wins for us,” Jayapal said, pointing to the GOP’s decision not to cut spending levels or insert any obvious conservative priorities, commonly known as “poison pill” language. The full Progressive Caucus plans to meet on the measure later Tuesday.

Still, the measure leaves Democrats without one of their major demands: Foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel. And since this bill would punt the next funding deadline into January, it’s unclear how Congress and the White House can come to a deal that would deliver aid to either war-torn country before then. (Republicans did pass an Israel aid package, but one that was funded by cutting the Internal Revenue Service that stands no chance in the Senate.)

At their own internal meeting on Tuesday, Johnson and his GOP leadership team made the case for their shutdown-averting bill. The Louisiana Republican argued to fellow Republicans that this was the only path forward, given the reality of the House’s narrow margins and the nearly three weeks lost to the GOP’s speaker’s fight, according to people in the room. Still, Johnson took some heat from his right flank, including Freedom Caucus members like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

As of Tuesday morning, it’s not clear how many Republicans plan to support the bill.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), one Republican who opposes the package, criticized the strategy as being willing to “acquiesce to the Senate.”

“I think we’re surrendering without putting up the appropriate fight,” Ogles said.

Jordain Carney and Olivia Beavers contributed. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said both he and the White House are on board Speaker Mike Johnson’s bill to avoid a government shutdown.

“The proposal before the House does two things Democrats pushed for,” Schumer told reporters. “We all want to avoid a shutdown. I talked to the White House and both of us agree, the White House and myself, that if this can avoid a shutdown it’ll be a good thing.”

The New York Democrat said he had negotiated some of the particulars of the stopgap spending package in talks with Johnson, including making sure that there were no cuts in the bill and that it would put defense funding in the latter of two set spending deadlines.

Still, Schumer called the two-tiered deadline — one in mid-January and the other in early February — “goofy” and made clear it’s not how he would have written a government funding patch.