Trump Posts Apparent Cellphone Number for Sen. Tom Cotton in Daylight Saving Fight

Trump says the Arkansas Republican is single-handedly holding up a House-passed bill to make daylight saving time permanent.

President Trump posted what appeared to be Sen. Tom Cotton's cellphone number and told people to call him about daylight saving time, The Hill reported.

The fight is over the Sunshine Protection Act, which would put the whole country on daylight saving time year-round and end the twice-a-year clock change. The House passed it in July, 308-117. Trump says Cotton, a fellow Republican from Arkansas, is the reason it's stuck in the Senate.

The president didn't stop at one post. He kept going after Cotton over the bill through Saturday, October 3, The Hill reported, in messages on Truth Social, his social media platform. NBC News reported that Trump appeared to share the senator's personal cellphone number as part of his push to make the clock change go away.

In one post, Trump called Cotton a friend, then said the senator was holding up a very important bill. “For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it's very easy to do, it only takes one!” Trump wrote. He has his own name for the measure: the “No More Changing of Clocks Act.”

Trump's count of one runs into a bigger number. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has said he doubts the bill can win the 60 votes it would need to advance, The Hill reported. The Senate hasn't taken it up, NBC News reported.

Cotton has never been quiet about where he stands. He's among the bill's most outspoken opponents, and he isn't the only Republican senator against it, the Associated Press reported in a story published by PBS. He chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, holds a seat in Republican leadership and faces reelection in November in a race that isn't expected to be close.

His objection comes down to darkness. Last year, The Hill reported, he warned that a permanent switch would turn winter dark and dismal for millions of Americans.

Daylight saving time sets clocks an hour ahead of standard time, and not every state observes it. Under the House-passed bill, a state could stay off it only if its legislature acted before the bill became law, the AP reported.

Cotton answered on Saturday on X, in a post his office pointed to. He wrote that nobody enjoys changing the clock, himself included, but that Congress has made daylight saving time permanent more than once and repealed it every time “once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter.”

“Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first,” he wrote.