President Trump publicly posted what appeared to be Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number Saturday, urging Arkansas voters to pressure the Republican holdout blocking permanent daylight saving time.
Trump used Truth Social to back the Sunshine Protection Act, which would lock in year-round daylight saving time and end the twice-a-year clock change. He singled out Cotton as the Senate obstacle and shared an Arkansas-area-code number that looked like the senator’s personal cell.
The Daily Mail reported calling the number. No one answered. The voicemail box was full. Trump spent the day at his northern Virginia golf club before heading to Ohio later Saturday.
House lawmakers already passed the bill in July. In the Senate, one determined member can stall legislation, and Trump made clear he sees Cotton in that role.
Trump did not speak evasively about the holdup.
He wrote on social media:
"For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it´s very easy to do, it only takes one!"
He followed with a direct appeal to the state that has backed him repeatedly:
"So, everyone in Arkansas, a State I love, and won 3 times, the last by by 34 points, tell Tom to, GET IT DONE! It will be appreciated by all,"
Trump also posted a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp supporting the measure. His case rested on ordinary life: more evening light, fewer dark drives home after the fall change, and an end to the twice-yearly scramble to reset clocks.
In another post he described a table of distinguished people who told him they hate coming home to darkness right after the mandatory switch. “It’s depressing,” he wrote.
The Washington Examiner reported the same core sequence: Trump published the cellphone number on Truth Social and urged people to call Cotton so the Sunshine Protection Act could move.
Cotton answered Saturday afternoon. He said he dislikes changing clocks too. He also said Congress has tried permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it once Americans lived through absurdly late winter sunrises.
His post put Arkansas first in plain terms:
"Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I´ll always put Arkansas first."
Trump fired back immediately. If Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he argued, the state would get an extra hour of daylight and families would stop racing around houses, farms, and workplaces twice a year to change clocks they often forget. “That is really putting Arkansas FIRST,” Trump added.
Cotton ranks among the most vocal Republican Senate opponents of the bill. Other GOP senators also resist it. The fight arrives weeks before the midterms, with Cotton up for reelection in November in a race not expected to be competitive.
Public opinion lines up more with ending the current system than defending it. A 2025 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that if forced to choose, most Americans would keep the extra hour of daylight in the evening. Only 12 percent of U.S. adults favor the present twice-a-year change. Forty-seven percent oppose it. Forty percent stay neutral.
Proponents, including the White House side of the argument, say permanent daylight saving time gives people more light when they are most active. Detractors warn that winter mornings would stay darker and more hazardous for school buses and early work shifts. States could still opt out if their legislatures act before the law takes effect.
Congress has circled this issue for more than a century. Daylight saving time first arrived as a wartime measure in 1918. Four years ago the Senate passed a bill to make it permanent; that version stalled in the House. This summer the House moved first. The Senate is where it sits.
Trump has used this tactic before. During the 2016 Republican nomination fight, after then-Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called him “unfit for office” over comments about John McCain’s military service, Trump released Graham’s personal cellphone number. Graham later became a close ally. A viral video showed him destroying flip phones after the number went public.
Cotton and Trump have clashed before without rupturing the broader relationship. Cotton criticized a first-term sentencing overhaul as a “jailbreak.” Earlier this year he temporarily pushed back when Trump tried to stall the confirmation of Jay Clayton for a top intelligence post. Trump ordered Clayton not to appear before Cotton’s committee. Bill Pulte served as acting director for several weeks this summer; the interim pick drew bipartisan criticism and had no known national security credentials in the reporting. Clayton won Senate confirmation in late July after Tulsi Gabbard left the job.
None of that history changes the immediate fight. The Sunshine Protection Act cleared the House. Trump wants it finished. Cotton is the named barrier. Posting the Arkansas number put the dispute in voters’ hands in the most direct way possible.
Voters who hate dark evenings and clock chaos now have a clear target. Senators who block popular, common-sense fixes should expect the pressure to keep coming.
