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President-elect Joe Biden said Friday he is assembling a multitrillion-dollar relief package that would boost stimulus payments for Americans to $2,000, extend unemployment insurance and send billions of dollars in aid to city and state governments, moving swiftly to address the nation’s deteriorating economic condition and the rampaging pandemic. The package will also include billions of dollars to improve vaccine distribution and tens of millions of dollars for schools, as well as rent forbearance and assistance to small businesses, especially those in low-income communities, Biden said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del. (Stein, Werner and DeBonis, 1/8)

[Joe] Biden criticized the size of the direct payments from the $900 billion relief bill passed last month, saying $600 "is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table and keeping the lights on." Biden said his relief package would also focus on investments regarding infrastructure and health care. "The price tag will be high," Biden said, but argued that investing in the economy now would pay off, and even help keep the debt under control. (Elis, 1/8)

President-elect Joe Biden promised $2,000 stimulus checks after his inauguration, and having now secured control of both chambers of Congress, Democrats will soon be expected to deliver the legislation. However, they may need the support of Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri—who has faced intense scrutiny following last Wednesday's deadly Capitol riot—to pass the measure. (Zhao, 1/10)

Growing up in the United States Virgin Islands, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith saw firsthand what can happen in a community with limited access to health care. Her father, Moleto “Bishop” Smith Sr., was only in his 40s when he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him partly paralyzed and with slurred speech. ... Now, tapped by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead a new federal task force, Dr. Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of internal medicine, public health and management at Yale University, will address a terrible reality of American medicine: persistent racial and ethnic disparities in access and care, the sort that contributed to her father’s disability. (Rabin, 1/8)

When President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20, he will inherit responsibility for stopping a pandemic that has disproportionately killed Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people. So will Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.Nunez-Smith, a Yale professor, physician, and researcher who has long studied racial disparities in health, in November became a co-chair of Biden’s transition task force on COVID-19. Last month, the President-elect named her to a prominent, new—and historic—role in his upcoming administration, running a health equity task force focused on the pandemic. The task force is inspired by legislation introduced to the U.S. Senate in April by now-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris; her bill never made it out of committee, but has shaped the incoming administration’s focus on the longstanding health inequities that have become so tragically and nationally visible this year. (Aspan, 1/9)