News in Review: Thursday, March 16, 2023

What does the news landscape look like?

Silicon Valley Bank has remained the top story over the past three days. The 2024 GOP presidential campaign remains in second place. The Oscars have fallen out of the news cycle.

This is how the top stories were covered on each side of the media yesterday:

• Silicon Valley Bank (13% more on the right)

• Trump / DeSantis / 2024 (40% more on the left)

• Abortion / pills (72% more on the left)

Media bias ratings are from AllSides.

This is how articles from liberal and conservative outlets were distributed over the past five days among the top stories.

Liberal outlets used these words more than conservative outlets:

• prosecutors (10.1x)

• fda (5.6x)

• mifepristone (5.1x)

Conservative outlets used these words more than liberal outlets:

• taiwan (24.6x)

• inflation (4.7x)

• border (3.8x)

What is happening in the top stories?

Now for a deep dive into our top three stories, starting with…

Silicon Valley Bank

Key people: FDIC, Joe Biden, Donald Trump Jr., Sheila Bair

Latest developments:

• Regulators at the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) have asked banks interested in acquiring failed lenders Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank to submit bids by March 17.

• The FDIC may need to seek temporary guarantees for all uninsured U.S. bank deposits to stem a drain of funds from small and regional U.S. lenders following deposit bailouts for failed banks SVB Financial and Signature Bank.

• The FDIC is making a concerted effort to return the lenders to the private sector after regulators took over SVB and Signature Bank during a weekend of turmoil that has reverberated through the global financial system.

• Donald Trump Jr. and other conservatives are blaming Biden for the collapse of SVB, but it’s being pointed out that banks also failed under Trump.

Trump / DeSantis / 2024

Key people: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Taryn Fenske, Glenton Gilzean

Latest developments:

• DeSantis traveled to New Hampshire to headline a key fundraising dinner for the state Republican Party, giving him a key opportunity to network with donors and party officials in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

• Trump widened his lead over DeSantis in a new Quinnipiac University poll of 15 current and potential candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, with Trump in first with 46 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, followed by DeSantis with 32 percent.

• Trump’s lead over DeSantis in the Quinnipiac University poll increased to 14 points, with Trump leading DeSantis by 11 points in a head-to-head match-up.

• A super PAC aligned with Trump formally accused DeSantis of waging a “shadow presidential campaign,” alleging that the combined force of pro-DeSantis super PACs, state-level political contributions, and the governor’s “personally lucrative book tour” amounts to a de facto White House bid.

Abortion / pills

Key people: U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, Joe Biden, Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Debbie Stabenow

Background:

• Anti-abortion groups are seeking to ban sales of the abortion pill mifepristone across the country, even in states where abortion is legal, as they challenge regulatory approval granted more than two decades ago.

• The groups sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November, contending the agency used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under age 18 to terminate a pregnancy.

• The lawsuit challenges the FDA’s approval of the drug mifepristone in 2000 and was filed by a group that helped challenge Roe v. Wade.

• A group of Democratic senators sent letters to seven pharmacies to urge them to ensure customers have access to an abortion drug as some states seek restrictions on the pill.

• Medication abortions, including mifepristone, account for more than half of all U.S. abortions.

Latest developments:

• A federal judge in Texas is poised to rule “as soon as possible” on whether to suspend the FDA’s approval of a widely-used abortion pill and potentially reverse the agency’s authority on drug regulation for the first time.

• Legal experts fear that if District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk orders the FDA to temporarily withdraw its approval of mifepristone, others will challenge FDA-approved treatments that they disagree with.

• During a high stake hearing that took place over the course of four hours on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk asked Erik Baptist, a lawyer representing the group Alliance Defending Freedom, for guidance on issuing a possible order.

• The Food and Drug Administration, top health organizations and the Biden administration have strongly disagreed with the lawsuit, contesting that mifepristone was properly vetted and that the FDA approval process, which took over four years, is a testament to that claim.