If it's Tuesday, the Justice Department and the SEC opened an investigation into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank as dual bank failures and new warnings about the health of the U.S. banking system keep consumers, the markets, and Washington on edge.

Plus new tensions between Russia and the U.S. as Russian jets intercept and then collide with a U.S. drone over international waters and what U.S. forces are condemning as a reckless and unsafe act by the Russian military.

And President Biden breaks with progressives on some key issues as he takes executive action on gun background checks ahead of the expected launch of a 2024 re-election campaign.

Welcome to meet the press now. I'm Kristen Welker. We begin this hour with the continued instability in the nation's banking system amid mounting questions about what led to the collapse of two key banks. How many more may be at risk? And what if anything can be done to prevent this from happening again?

Two sources familiar with the matter have now confirmed to NBC News.

The Justice Department and SEC are investigating Silicon Valley Banks collapse.

That news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

NBC News can also confirm that the Justice Department will look at why executives at the bank sold shares before it failed. The Justice Department has declined to comment. That comes as just moments ago the

markets closed up today for the first time in nearly a week with regional banks rebounding from

their losses yesterday. But in a sign of ongoing concern, one of the big three rating agencies,

Moody's, has cut its outlook on the U.S. banking system to negative, citing a rapidly deteriorating

operating environment. Meanwhile, the blame game has already begun on Capitol Hill with House

Speaker Kevin McCarthy trying to pin the instability on the Biden administration, tweeting

Biden's reckless spending caused record inflation and rapid interest rate hikes that broke

family budgets and banks too.

We must restore fiscal sanity.

The White House responded to that tweet just a few hours ago.

If that argument were the case, you would see many, many banks facing this kind of situation.

Instead, what you're seeing is largely an idiosyncratic situation with a handful of banks.

I think the story here at the bottom line is that a set of banks that in the previous administration,

Republicans were largely saying these are not systemically important.

If something bad happens at one of these banks, it's not going to spread more broadly in the financial system.

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