President Trump posted Sen. Tom Cotton’s cellphone number on Truth Social and urged Arkansans to call him over the stalled Sunshine Protection Act, direct pressure on a Senate holdout blocking a popular House-passed bill.
President Donald Trump shared Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social on Saturday and told residents of the state to phone the senator and demand action on the Sunshine Protection Act.
The bill would lock in daylight saving time year-round and end the twice-a-year clock change. The House already cleared it 308-117 in July. It has gone nowhere in the Senate, which sits in recess and will not resume legislative business until after the November midterms.
Daily Caller reporting described Trump blaming Cotton for stalling the measure and broadcasting the northwestern Arkansas number to his millions of followers so constituents could deliver the message themselves.
Trump still called the senator “a friend of mine.” He argued that more evening light helps golfers, tennis players, hunters, and farmers. He pointed to a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and said more than 65 percent of the public wants the extra afternoon sun.
Trump made the stakes plain in the post. Fox News carried his words:
"For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it’s very easy to do, it only takes one! It should pass overwhelmingly, in a Bipartisan fashion... tell Tom to, GET IT DONE!"
He wrote “It only takes one” and urged Arkansans to “GET IT DONE.” The tactic put Cotton’s personal line in front of voters who want the clock-change ritual ended for good.
Reporters who dialed the number reached a voicemail box that never identified its owner. Call volume climbed so high that leaving a message became impossible, according to accounts that tracked the flood of dials.
Cotton is not the only Republican opposed to permanent daylight saving time. Yet Trump zeroed in on him as the senator standing in the way of a floor vote that should clear easily.
Senate dynamics with the White House have stayed tense on other fronts, including when Senate Republicans pressed Jack Smith over prior cases.
Cotton fired back on X the same afternoon. He did not back down.
The Arkansas senator wrote:
"No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter.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."
Washington Examiner coverage underscored that Cotton remains a firm holdout even after the House vote and public pressure.
His argument rests on history: earlier experiments with year-round daylight saving time produced dark winter mornings, and Congress reversed course. Cotton says schoolchildren in Arkansas would pay the price if the clocks stayed advanced.
That stance puts him at odds with a president who sees the twice-yearly switch as needless hassle and wants the extra evening light locked in. The bill still needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate once the chamber returns.
Other confirmation battles have shown the same narrow margins, such as when a Senate panel advanced Nicole Saphier as surgeon general pick on a 12-11 vote.
Trump has used this approach before. In 2015 he read Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cellphone number aloud at a rally after the South Carolina Republican insulted him. Graham said afterward he was “probably getting a new phone.”
Graham died in July. At the funeral this summer, Trump told the gathering, “I did something that I shouldn’t have done.”
New York Post reporting noted the parallel while covering the latest Cotton post and the continued push for the Sunshine Protection Act.
This time Trump framed the call campaign as constituent pressure on a friend, not personal score-settling. He wants the Senate to finish what the House started by a lopsided bipartisan margin.
Midterm calculations already shape much of the fall calendar, a point Lara Trump has raised in separate comments on the party’s standing.
The Sunshine Protection Act would scrap the spring-forward, fall-back routine that still confuses schedules, disrupts sleep, and draws annual complaints from parents and employers. Supporters say permanent daylight saving time matches how most people actually live and work.
Opponents, Cotton among them, warn that winter sunrises would arrive too late for safe school travel and morning routines. Both sides have data and history on their side. What they do not have is a Senate vote.
With the chamber out until after the midterms, the bill sits frozen unless leadership decides to move it. Trump’s Saturday post made clear he expects Arkansas voters to keep the pressure on until that happens.
Institutional questions around Trump’s longer agenda continue elsewhere, including talk that Justice Alito could open another seat on the Court.
A president who wants a widely backed bill off the shelf is entitled to tell the holdout’s own constituents exactly how to reach him. If permanent daylight saving time is the common-sense fix most Americans say they want, one senator should have to answer for keeping the clocks stuck in the old routine.