President Joe Biden expressed his “deep disappointment” with the Supreme Court’s major voting rights case decision Thursday, in which the six conservative justices further weakened the Voting Rights Act.

All three liberal justices dissented, led by Justice Elena Kagan who wrote a lengthy lamentation about the majority’s decision and Court’s history of helping keep minority voters from the ballot box.

In a span of just eight years, the Court has now done severe damage to two of the most important provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — a law that took years of struggle and strife to secure,” Biden wrote in a statement.

He reemphasized the need to pass federal voting safeguards: namely, the sweeping democracy reform package called the For The People Act and legislation meant to restore the Voting Rights Act to its full power, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The For the People Act was most recently filibustered by Republicans in the Senate, and the John Lewis Act likely faces the same fate once it’s completed later this year.

Now, in the latest twist, the business and its longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, 73, are facing charges relating to tax crimes. The exact charges Weisselberg is facing will be unsealed on Thursday, but are expected to involve unpaid taxes on benefits extended to him. The move by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance could have long-term repercussions on Trump’s ability to keep the business afloat and refinance debt.....

Commercial loan covenants don’t typically mention criminal charges in part because they’re such a rarity for businesses, but also because charges are just that -- charges, not convictions, according to professor Adam Levitin at Georgetown University, who specializes in bankruptcy and commercial law.

A spokesman for Deutsche Bank AG, a favored lender for the Trump Organization, declined to comment on how the charges may impact the loans they have coming due.

Even if the loan documents don’t speak directly to criminal charges, sophisticated lenders -- and their lawyers -- can find a way to push the issue. Federal courts are no stranger to lengthy, expensive fights over what gives rise to defaults under commercial lending agreements.

“Regardless of the specific provisions in loan documents, when a lender wants to cut ties with a corporation that’s in trouble -- particularly in trouble with the law -- the lender will often find a way to call a default and get out of dodge,” said David Prager, a restructuring and financial adviser at Kroll, who wasn’t speaking about the Trump situation specifically.

It may also be harder to find banks willing to refinance the debt down the road -- most banks would balk at extending a loan to a company subject to a criminal indictment.

During the 2020 election, the Trump campaign desperately tried to claim that Joe Biden was a supporter of the “defund the police” movement advocated by some elements of the Democratic Party. But as we noted, Trump had a problem: Biden firmly rejected calls from left-wing activists to defund police and in fact said he would double funding for a community policing program that would put more officers on the street.

This did not stop the Trump campaign or the former president from falsely suggesting otherwise. On our “Bottomless Pinocchio” list, we listed 72 examples of Trump saying Biden would defund police.

Trump lost the election. But here we are, six months into Biden’s presidency, and Republicans are still making this false claim. Cruz and Banks are two good examples of this effort, though there are many others. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), for example, claimed in a tweet that Biden “went from defund the police during the campaign to now ‘refund the police,’ ” even though his position has not changed.....

The Pinocchio Test
Republicans keep trying to tag Biden with being part of the defund police movement. But that’s simply false. The flimsiness of the charge is demonstrated by the paucity of the evidence that lawmakers muster when making their hyperbolic claims.

The reality is this: Biden wants to boost federal funding to allow for the hiring of more police officers. He said that during the campaign and then fulfilled that pledge in his initial budget proposal. The president sets the policies in his administration — and he’s been entirely consistent.

Cruz and Banks earn Four Pinocchios.
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