WASHINGTON, D.C. — Friday marked one of the more politically charged days on Capitol Hill in the age of COVID-19.

“This is a totally partisan bill,” Representative Bob Latta (R, 5th Congressional District) said in an interview. “No Republicans were included in any of the discussions. There weren’t any committee hearings on this thing. And so they just rolled this thing out.”

Latta echoed how most of the Republican Party felt about the $3 trillion Heroes Act, an 1,800-page “Phase 4” relief package that House Democrats introduced earlier in the week.

On Friday evening, the Democrat-led House passed the legislation, along with a bill temporarily changing how the House will operate (more on that below).

“Rather than spend time on a messaging bill here, we ought to spend time on a substantive bill that we could actually pass in a bipartisan manner, Republicans and Democrats getting together, that would really help the American people,” Rep. Steve Chabot (R, 1st Congressional District) said in an interview. “That’s what we ought to be doing.”

Some Republicans, like Rep. Jim Jordan (R, 4th Congressional District), said a Phase 4 should be about getting people back to work.

“Let’s focus on that versus more big government control from Washington, where Nancy Pelosi calls us back once every two weeks to spend another trillion dollars of money that we have to borrow,” Jordan said in an interview on Wednesday. “That’s crazy!”

The Heroes Act, which is already considered “dead on arrival” in the Republican-led Senate, would dedicate nearly $1 trillion to state and local governments, issue another round of $1,200 direct payments, and include $200 billion of hazard pay for essential workers, among many other things.

But Republicans jumped on several items in the bill that they claim have nothing to do with the pandemic, like money for election security, pension relief, and expanding banking for marijuana companies.

Ohio Democrats Rep. Tim Ryan and Rep. Joyce Beatty defended the legislation.

“I think everything, in one way or another, is connected to what’s happening in the country,” Ryan (D, 13th Congressional District) said in an interview. “People are losing their pensions. We need to make sure that we can have mail-in ballots for the presidential election in November. This is all connected to the crisis that we find ourselves in the middle of.”

On the House floor on Friday, Beatty (D, 3rd Congressional District) said: “I challenge my colleagues to join us and vote for this big and bold bill. Americans deserve every penny of it.”

There was also a big divide over voting to temporarily change how the House operates.

Democrats proposed something called proxy voting, which means one lawmaker can cast votes for up to 10 members so they don’t all have to travel back to Washington while it’s unsafe; and House committees would be able to hold virtual hearings.

But many Ohio Republicans called it a bad policy.

“We should be as fully functional as possible and allow accommodations for a handful of people, versus setting the default to a vacant Capitol,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R, 8th Congressional District) said in an interview.

Democrats said the change, which will only be allowed for 45 days at a time, makes sense.

“It’s a rational, pragmatic way of solving a problem in the middle of a global pandemic,” Ryan said.

Congress will now go back to the drawing board, as the House adapts to its new temporary workflow of proxy voting and virtual hearings.