Trump posts apparent Cotton phone number in daylight saving time push

Cotton reiterates opposition, cites dark winter mornings for schoolchildren

President Donald Trump on Saturday turned his social media account toward Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, posting what appeared to be Cotton’s personal cellphone number and urging the state’s residents to call their senator to support making daylight saving time permanent.

“For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill,” Trump wrote on social media. “So, everyone in Arkansas … tell Tom to, GET IT DONE! It will be appreciated by all.” Trump added that passing the proposal would give professional golfers more time on the greens. The post included a phone number with an Arkansas area code.

The Associated Press called the number; no one answered and the voicemail box was full. The Guardian also called and received a message from the service carrier stating that “the wireless customer you are calling is not available.”

The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent, passed the House in July. Daylight saving time is the period between spring and fall when clocks in most parts of the US are set one hour ahead of standard time, and not all states currently observe it. Under the bill, states can opt out of the change if their respective legislatures act to do so before the bill’s enactment. The legislation faces roadblocks in the Senate, where Cotton chairs the intelligence committee and is one of several Republicans who oppose the change.

Proponents of permanent daylight saving time, including Trump and his administration, argue the change would provide more daylight during the hours Americans are most active. Detractors counter that it would leave darker, and potentially more hazardous, winter mornings when children wait for school buses and parents drive to work in darkness.

Cotton, a member of Republican leadership, reiterated his opposition in his own Saturday afternoon social media post. “No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent daylight saving time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” he wrote. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

Cotton wrote that many Arkansans would not see sunrise until 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. during the dead of winter if daylight saving time were permanent. Under the same scenario, he noted, residents of Seattle would not see sunrise until 9 a.m., and in Williston, North Dakota, the sun would not rise until nearly 9:45 a.m. at the height of winter.

Trump, who was spending Saturday at his northern Virginia golf club before traveling to Ohio, responded with his own social media post. “If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn’t have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so,” Trump wrote. The president added that he believed “that is really putting Arkansas FIRST.”

This is not the first time Trump has released personal contact information about a U.S. senator. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina described Trump as “unfit for office” after Trump denigrated the military service of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Trump then released Graham’s personal cellphone number. The episode prompted a viral video in which Graham dramatically destroyed a series of flip phones. Graham later became a close ally of Trump before his death in July. McCain died in 2018.

A 2025 poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that, if forced to choose, most Americans would prefer to keep the extra hour of daylight in the evening. Only 12% of U.S. adults favor the current system of daylight saving time, which requires people in most states to reset clocks twice a year, while 47% are opposed and 40% are neutral.

Members of Congress have long weighed the potential benefits and costs of daylight saving time since it was first adopted as a wartime measure in 1942 during the Second World War. The Senate passed a bill in 2022 to make daylight saving time permanent, but the measure stalled in the House.