> Does this statement reflect any shift in policy?

It’s a decision of how to apply existing policy to a specific situation, not a policy change. Existing policy is nonspecific enough that reasonable people could disagree on how best to apply it here without changing it.

> Haven’t depositors always been first on the list to get paid, even their uninsured deposits?

Yes.

> I don’t know if charging a special assessment to member banks is standard operating procedure

It isn’t routine, which is why it requires invoking the systemic risk exception.

> but that doesn’t sound like government intervention.

It’s a government decision to intervene in a particular way, so…

> It just sounds like reasonable operation of the FDIC.

It’s not just “reasonable operation of the FDIC”, since both Fed and Treasury actions are involved. And, even if it was, FDIC is a government corporation, so its actions are government intervention. Its reasonable operation is reasonable government intervention, but its still government intervention.

Not sure how "taxing depositors at other banks to pay for uninsured deposits" is "reasonable operation of the FDIC".

(And yes, it's taxing the depositors. Because even if it's "officially" a fee to the other banks, it will be trickled down to their customers through lower interest rates and higher fees rather than absorbed.)

If this was necessary to recover insured deposits, that would be reasonable. But instead, the people who made poor decisions aren't going to lose anything, because the extra money is coming out of the pockets of everybody else with money in banks.

They invoked this exception repeatedly during the financial crisis and fees did not go up in response. In fact, they all but disappeared.