House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters today that passing a short-term government funding bill would allow lawmakers to go home for Thanksgiving and "cool off."

• "Members have been here for ... 10 weeks," Johnson said. "This place is a pressure cooker."

Why it matters: Within hours, the congressional pressure cooker had exploded — spraying childish insults, violent threats and alleged "kidney punches" all over Capitol Hill.

Driving the news: One of Congress' most bizarre days in recent memory began when Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) — one of the eight House Republicans who voted to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — accused McCarthy of elbowing him in a narrow hallway.

• McCarthy denied that he intentionally elbowed Burchett and mocked the congressman for saying he was still in pain, telling reporters: "If I kidney punched him, he'd be on the ground."
• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the chief architect of McCarthy's ouster, filed an ethics complaint against the former speaker — citing a "substantial increase in breaches of decorum unlike anything we have seen since the pre-Civil War era."

Over in the Senate, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) — a former mixed martial artist — challenged Teamsters president Sean O'Brien to a fight during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing.

• "You want to run your mouth. We can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here," Mullin said, standing up and calling on the labor boss to do the same.
• Senate HELP chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) then intervened, furiously reminding Mullin: "You're a United States senator. Sit down."

Silver lining: Not all of today's confrontations were physical.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) began the morning by calling Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) a "p***y" for voting to block her impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
• House Oversight chair James Comer (R-Ky.) exploded at Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) during an exchange over Comer's family business dealings, saying the blue-suited Democrat looked like a "Smurf."

Flashback: The 118th Congress kicked off in January with a heated speaker's election, in which Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) had to be physically restrained after lunging at Gaetz on the House floor.

• The bad behavior has only escalated since then: Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) face felony indictments, while Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) was condemned by congressional leaders for screaming at a group of young Senate pages in July.
• Members have introduced 18 censure motions against their colleagues — many of them acts of tit-for-tat retribution, according to data compiled by Quorum.

The bottom line: It's no wonder that Americans gave Congress an approval rating of 13% last month — its lowest mark since 2017.

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Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin said he's "actively contemplating" throwing his financial support behind former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley after souring on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Axios' Erin Doherty reports.

Why it matters: A string of GOP megadonors have begun indicating that Haley — who has gained momentum in recent polls — may be their best bet for a viable alternative to former President Trump.

State of play: Haley and DeSantis are competing for a distant second behind Trump, but a massive injection of cash from the elite GOP donor class could help close the gap in the early voting states.

• Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller told AP yesterday that he plans to back Haley after Sen. Tim Scott''s (R-S.C.) surprise decision to drop out of the race.
• Metal refining magnate Andy Sabin, who had previously been fundraising for Scott, told CNBC he will decide how he can best help Haley after the Thanksgiving holiday.
• And as Axios' Mike Allen scooped this morning, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been having private discussions with Haley and believes she has the potential to bring the country together.

A flurry of developments took place today in the many legal entanglements involving Trump:

• Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis predicted that Trump's Georgia election interference case "will take many months" and likely won't conclude until winter 2024 or early 2025.
• Willis also made an emergency request for a protective order restricting the release of discovery materials, after leaked videos showed witnesses who have taken plea deals — including former Trump attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell — telling prosecutors about their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
• Special counsel Jack Smith urged the judge presiding over Trump's federal election interference case to reinstate her narrow gag order, citing a "pattern, stretching back years, in which people publicly targeted by the defendant are ... subject to harassment, threats, and intimidation."

Meanwhile: Trump shared a post from a supporter on Truth Social saying their "fantasy" was to see New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron placed under "citizen's arrest" for their handling of Trump's civil fraud trial.

Tens of thousands of people flooded the National Mall today for a massive pro-Israel rally, where bipartisan congressional leaders rejected calls for a ceasefire and demanded the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

The historic "March for Israel" prompted extraordinary security preparations by Capitol Police and across the government, and followed several weeks of huge demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protesters calling for an end to the siege of Gaza.

Meanwhile: The newly formed congressional Jewish Caucus is set to have both Democratic and Republican members, a rare show of unity in a time of rising antisemitism, Axios' Andrew Solender scooped today.