Fox News and Fox Business both neglected to report major news broken Thursday night by network correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, whose question during a White House event elicited responses from both Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump seeming to confirm their plans to defy a court-ordered restart of full payments for the more than 40 million beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Earlier that day, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the government to restart full benefit payments to the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to afford groceries. The administration appealed the ruling on Friday morning after releasing conflicting statements regarding plans to defy or comply with prior rulings on the program. It was in this context that Heinrich asked Trump on Thursday night, “What's your message to folks as they work this out in the courts and in Congress as we’re heading into Thanksgiving?”

Trump allowed his vice president to take the first shot at responding, wherein Vance laid all of the blame for what he called “the Democrat government shutdown” on his political opposition — even though his own party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. He also stated, “We can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation,” adding, “We’re trying to keep as much going as possible. … But we’re not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge.”

After Vance’s tirade, Trump chimed in with a rambling response that only briefly touched on Heinrich’s question — stating twice that the United States can't afford to pay full SNAP benefits because it has to “remain liquid” and reserve government funds for “problems, catastrophes, wars, could be anything” — before devolving into a rant about unrelated topics.

Despite being exclusively responsible for this massive news development that the White House planned to defy a court order and further obstruct paying out full benefits for tens of millions of SNAP beneficiaries (most of whom are children and seniors), Fox News and Fox Business couldn’t be bothered to report the news broken by their own correspondent.

Media Matters reviewed SnapStream transcript archives for all programming on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network from 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 6, through 12 p.m. on Friday, November 7, and found passing mentions of the SNAP dispute but zero direct discussion of Trump or Vance’s stated defiance of the court order.

On Fox’s Hannity and Fox News @ Night, network personalities and guests discussed the lapse in SNAP benefits in the context of the ongoing government shutdown but made no mention of Trump or Vance’s stated plans to ignore the latest court ruling — despite the fact that Heinrich’s question and Vance and Trump’s responses came at approximately 8 p.m. on the East Coast.

This morning on Fox & Friends First, correspondent Madeleine Rivera closed a segment on the ongoing government shutdown by mentioning that “a federal judge has ordered the administration to fully fund the food benefits ... and to do so by today,” but made no mention of Trump or Vance’s statements last night. The lapse in SNAP spending came up during interviews with Republican elected officials on Fox & Friends and America’s Newsroom. During a later segment on America’s Newsroom, White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported that “the administration is so far complying with the court order to fund food stamp benefits during the shutdown” (the Trump administration claimed it was complying earlier this week) but did not mention last night’s remarks from the president and vice president. There was another passing mention of the court ruling, but no discussion of Trump's seeming defiance of it, during a report from correspondent Chad Pergram on The Faulkner Focus.

At Fox Business, the results were much the same, with interviews on Mornings with Maria Bartiromo with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) and White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and a Varney & Co. report from correspondent Lauren Simonetti making only passing mentions of the SNAP benefit lapse.