President Donald Trump publicly shared the cell phone number of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on Friday, escalating a pressure campaign against the Arkansas senator over his opposition to legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent, according to Breitbart News.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called on people — particularly those in Cotton’s home state — to call the senator directly and urge him to back the Sunshine Protection Act. Trump framed the bill as a practical win for people who want more usable daylight hours, singling out golfers, tennis players, hunters, and farmers as constituencies that would benefit.
A targeted appeal to Arkansas
Trump described Cotton as “a friend of mine” even as he accused him of standing in the way of the measure, which would end the practice of changing clocks twice a year.
“Everybody in Arkansas, Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill,” Trump said, per Breitbart. He referred to the legislation by two names, including a folksy alternative: the “We Don’t Want to Change Our Clocks Twice a Year Act.”
Trump emphasized how easily one senator can stall legislation, saying, “For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it’s very easy to do, it only takes one!”
The president predicted the bill “should pass overwhelmingly, in a Bipartisan fashion,” and argued that “nobody wants to spend their precious time running all over the place, turning Clocks back twice a year.” He also made a case for afternoon daylight over morning light, calling sunshine later in the day preferable to earlier.
Addressing Arkansans directly, Trump invoked his own electoral track record in the state, noting he had won it multiple times, most recently by a wide margin, and urged them to tell Cotton to “GET IT DONE!”
“Almost everybody wants ‘The Sunshine Protection Act’ to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump added, telling the “Great People of Arkansas” to let their senator know it would be “a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.” He closed by encouraging people to “call Tom on his cellphone” — the detail that quickly drew attention given that he published the number itself.
Long push for permanent daylight saving
The post is not the first time Trump has weighed in on the issue. In May, as the Energy and Commerce Committee took up the Sunshine Protection Act, Trump said he would work “very hard to see The Sunshine Protection Act signed into Law.”
The proposal has already cleared one chamber. According to Breitbart, the House of Representatives voted 308-117 in July to pass the Sunshine Protection Act — a lopsided, bipartisan margin that underscores the broad support the measure enjoys in Congress.
That leaves the Senate, where a single member’s objection can effectively block a bill from advancing under the chamber’s procedural rules. Trump’s public targeting of Cotton reflects both frustration with that dynamic and a belief that constituent pressure can move a senator who is otherwise insulated from a straightforward up-or-down vote.
Why the issue resonates
Daylight saving time has long been a subject of popular grumbling, and the biannual clock change remains one of the few federal policies that touches nearly every American household directly. Supporters of the Sunshine Protection Act argue that locking the clocks would eliminate the disruption of the spring-forward and fall-back transitions, which have been linked by critics to sleep disruption and scheduling headaches for businesses, schools, and families.
Backers also point to economic and recreational benefits — the extra evening daylight that Trump highlighted in his post, which they say gives people more time for outdoor activity after work and school.
Opponents, including some senators who have been wary of the bill, have raised concerns about what permanent daylight saving time would mean for winter mornings, when many parts of the country would not see sunrise until unusually late hours. Cotton’s specific objections were not detailed in the Breitbart account, but his position has been enough to keep the Senate from acting despite the House’s decisive vote.
A familiar tactic
Trump’s decision to publish a fellow Republican’s personal contact information marks an unusually direct escalation in an intraparty dispute. By handing Cotton’s number to his Truth Social followers, the president is effectively deputizing his audience to lobby the senator — a move that could generate a flood of calls to a personal line.
Whether that pressure changes Cotton’s stance remains to be seen. The House has already done its part with a veto-proof-style margin, and the bill’s proponents now need only to overcome the procedural hold that Trump is blaming on the Arkansas senator. For now, the fight over whether Americans will keep changing their clocks has landed squarely on one senator’s phone.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/10/03/trump-gives-out-sen-tom-cottons-cell-phone-number-over-opposition-to-permanent-daylight-saving-time-bill/