Nobody in America enjoys stumbling around the house twice a year resetting every clock on the wall.
A bill to end that ritual sailed through the House, then ran into one Republican in the Senate.
And President Trump answered with ten digits that turned one Senator’s afternoon upside down.
Trump hands Arkansas a phone number
President Trump took to Truth Social and posted what he described as the personal cellphone number of US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Trump called Cotton “a friend of mine” in the same post. Then he blamed him for holding up the Sunshine Protection Act, the bill that would keep daylight saving time in place all year and end the twice-a-year clock change.
The President told Arkansans to pick up the phone and tell their Senator to “GET IT DONE.”
He also spelled out why one man matters so much. In the Senate, Trump wrote, “it only takes one.”
According to The Hill, Trump added that the bill “should pass overwhelmingly, in a Bipartisan fashion.”
The House approved it 308-117 in 2026. That’s a lopsided number in a town where the two parties can barely agree on lunch.
Trump made the case that later sunsets help golfers, tennis players, hunters, and farmers. He attached a letter of support from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, and he claimed more than 65% of the public wants the extra afternoon light.
Reuters reported the number carries a northwestern Arkansas area code and does not appear on Cotton’s official government website. Reporters who called reached a voicemail box that never named its owner, and the Daily Beast reported that so many calls poured in that nobody could leave a message.
Cotton digs in on dark winter mornings
Cotton answered on X the same afternoon.
He conceded that nobody likes changing the clock, himself included. But he pointed out that Congress enacted permanent daylight saving time before and repealed it once Americans lived through late winter sunrises.
“Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first,” Cotton wrote.
He has history on his side there, and it’s worth saying so. President Richard Nixon signed year-round daylight saving time into law in December 1973 during the oil embargo. Congress pulled the plug in October 1974 after one winter of children waiting for school buses in the dark.
And this isn’t Cotton’s first stand. The Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act by unanimous consent in 2022, and the House let it die. In October 2025, US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) tried the same fast track, and Cotton objected on the floor.
The Washington Times noted that Cotton chairs both the Senate Republican Conference and the Senate Intelligence Committee. So this is a member of Senate leadership standing between the President and a bill 308 House Members backed.
One Senator, one objection, and a stalled agenda
Here’s where the fight gets bigger than clocks.
Trump has spent months arguing that Senate procedure lets a tiny number of lawmakers smother bills that command big majorities. The Sunshine Protection Act hands him a clean, easy-to-grasp example. A bill clears the House by nearly three to one, the President wants to sign it, and it sits.
But it’s fair to slow down for a second. Cotton isn’t the only obstacle, even if Trump’s post painted him as one. The Associated Press noted other Republicans oppose the switch, and a senior Hill aide told NBC News that Senators in both parties raised objections in committee. The same aide said Cotton planned to ask Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) not to bring the bill up at all.
That last detail deserves a second look. A single objection only blocks the unanimous consent shortcut. Senate leadership can still schedule a floor vote the regular way and put every Senator on the record.
So the real question lands on leadership’s desk. If the votes exist, why hasn’t anyone called the roll?
And the calendar makes the standoff stranger. The Washington Times reported the Senate sits in recess and won’t return to legislative business until after the November midterms, which means no vote was coming regardless of what Cotton did. Americans will set their clocks back again this fall either way.
Critics in the press called the post a doxxing. They have a precedent to point to. Trump read the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s cellphone number aloud at a 2015 rally after the South Carolina Republican insulted him, and the Daily Beast reported Graham said he was “probably getting a new phone.”
Trump himself looked back on that episode at Graham’s funeral. “I did something that I shouldn’t have done,” he said.
But there’s a difference between a campaign-trail grudge and what happened here. This time Trump pointed voters at their own Senator over a specific bill, and asked them to do the most old-fashioned thing in American politics. Call your representative.
Whether a personal cell is the right line for that is a fair argument. Voters flooding a Senator with their opinion on pending legislation is not exactly a scandal, though.
And the dispute shows how Trump operates when a bill he wants stalls inside his own party. He doesn’t work the cloakroom. He goes over the heads of the Senate straight to the people who sent those Senators to Washington, DC.
Cotton may well win the argument on winter sunrises. The 1974 experiment collapsed fast, and parents in northern states would feel those dark mornings first.
But Senate Republicans now have a President publicly naming who’s in the way, on an issue where polling shows most Americans are sick of the clock change. Expect this one to come roaring back when the Senate returns.
Sources: Daily Caller, “Trump Doxxes GOP Senator’s Cell Phone Number Amid Push To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent”; The Hill, “Trump posts GOP senator’s cell phone number over daylight savings act stall”; Washington Times, “Trump urges supporters to call what he says is Tom Cotton’s phone number”; NBC News, “House passes Trump-backed bill that would make daylight saving time permanent”; NewsNation, “Effort to fast-track permanent daylight saving time bill thwarted”; History.com, “Why America’s Permanent Daylight Saving Time Experiment Failed”