Trish Bordeaux, 32, gets anxious every time she puts on her green Starbucks apron. As a person with asthma and as a woman trying to get pregnant, she is worried about contracting Covid-19. But she needs the work because her primary job, as a second-grade teaching assistant, doesn’t offer health insurance that covers fertility treatments.

Neither does her husband Derek’s job as a machine operator at a beverage manufacturing company.

WSJ columnist Lettie Teague, who is white, has always associated wine with feelings of conviviality and warmth, but Black women in the industry told her they have felt excluded and experienced microaggressions and overt racism on the job. Heather Johnston, who owns wine shop Good Wine in Brooklyn, and who is Black, said sales reps often assumed her white male employee was in charge. J’nai Gaither, who has worked as a tasting room associate at Napa Valley wineries, said one guest on a tour kept asking her about whether there was slavery in Napa. Others have felt comfortable using the ‘N’ word with her. A number of Black women in the industry say these aren’t just one-off incidents and have pointed out other examples of inequity in the industry. Until recently, the Court of Master Sommeliers, a powerful industry organization, required students to call their instructors “master,” a word widely associated with the history of slavery in the U.S. 

Thinking about your finances can be daunting, while overhauling your budget may be a challenge, but financial planners say you should try to prepare as much as you can as you head back to work or to college during the pandemic.

California has experienced rolling blackouts for the first time since the 2001. Millions of people in the state have been warned they may lose power this week. Here’s why, according to experts:

A year after the Wall Street Journal reported that dozens of would-be sellers in the U.S. were advertising rifles and handguns on Facebook Marketplace as empty boxes, a new tactic has emerged. As Americans buy guns in record numbers, several firearm sellers are now disguising their posts by purporting to sell stickers of gun makers’ logos. Private sales of firearms across state lines in the U.S. are meant to be funneled through licensed gun dealers. People barred from owning guns, due to state or federal restrictions, can turn to online exchanges and social-media sites to avoid background checks when making a transaction.

A top U.S. diplomat told House committees last week that efforts by President Trump and his allies to press Kyiv to open investigations in exchange for a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president amounted to a quid pro quo, his lawyer said.