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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.

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. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, and House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner are calling for a criminal investigation into whether former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen committed perjury in testimony before Congress.

In their complaint, sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the two say there is “compelling evidence” that Cohen “appears to have committed perjury and knowingly made false statements while testifying under oath during his deposition before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“Committee”) on February 28, 2019.” They go on to request that the Department of Justice investigate whether his testimony warrants another charge for making a false statement.

“The Biden Justice Department must take off its partisan blinders and investigate disgraced fraudster and disbarred attorney Michael Cohen, a felon previously convicted for lying to Congress, who just admitted to lying again to Congress,” Stefanik said in a statement.

In 2019, Cohen, who worked for Trump for decades, was asked by the committee about the personal financial statements of then-president Trump and whether or not Trump directed both him or Allen Weisselberg — then-Trump Organization chief financial officer — to “inflate the numbers for his personal statement.”

Cohen responded: “Not that I recall, no.”

But when Cohen was asked about his 2019 testimony when he was called as a star witness in the civil fraud trial in New York against Trump last month, he stated that he had lied under oath during his appearance before the committee. Cohen later clarified during the trial that while Trump never specifically asked him to alter their financial statements, it was understood he was speaking in code.

“He did not specifically state, ‘Michael, go inflate the numbers,’” Cohen testified. “Donald Trump speaks like a mob boss, and what he does is he tells you what he wants without specifically telling you.”

In the letter, Stefanik and Turner write, “Cohen’s testimony at the New York trial is inconsistent with his testimony before the Committee. That Mr. Cohen was willing to openly and brazenly state at trial that he lied to Congress on this specific issue is startling. His willingness to make such a statement alone should necessitate an investigation.”

Cohen responded to the referral in a statement saying, “Republican Congress members Stefanik and Turner continue to do Donald’s bidding in witness tampering and obstructing justice. The two members fail to understand the distinction between explicit and implied; which is how the question was asked and accurately responded to. The topic was further clarified several questions thereafter; which is conveniently and intentionally being ignored. I am not concerned at all with their baseless request.”

Stefanik is a close ally of Trump and was the first member of Congress to endorse his third bid for the presidency. Last week, she also filed an ethics complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron for displaying “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance.” Engoron is presiding over the $250 million lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Tish James against Trump that accuses him of inflating his assets for financial gain.

Trump has railed against James and Engoron — prompting the judge to impose a partial gag order on Trump. On Tuesday morning, he shared a post on his social media site, Truth Social calling for both of them to be put under citizen’s arrest.

Trump has also castigated Cohen for his participation in the trial, calling him a “serial liar.”

Trump is currently being sued in New York, and investigated in Georgia, Florida, Washington and Manhattan in cases that have intersected with his 2024 presidential campaigning and threaten his political and business future.

Trump and his three grown children have testified in the New York civil fraud case in recent weeks. Donald Trump Jr. returned to the witness stand Monday to defend his father and the Trump Organization in the trial.