A+: schools can’t get laptops for kids to study remotely because of Trump admin sanctions on Chinese companies. The rationale for the sanctions is solid — ethnic slave labor — though I’m skeptical that the administration applied it even-handedly. If we had a real government, these conflicting goals would have been addressed, if not solved, before it became a crisis that compounded the plight of poor families, but we don’t. If anything, it’s more likely that the administration engineered a slowdown on laptop imports in order to force kids back into schools. That kind of strategy seems awfully ambitious for a sleepy ghoul like Wilbur Ross (Commerce imposed the sanctions), but not for Mnuchin, Miller, and Kushner. The sanctions were announced on 20 July, when the political fight over school reopenings was in full heat — right when Trump was threatening to cut school funding, so we know they were groping around for leverage. We also know that Miller takes a keen interest in using educational institutions to achieve his political ends. And he’s very detail-oriented.