President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.
One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.
“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.
A POLITICO call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cotton isn’t the only senator who’s expressed reservations about the bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune stood against a version of it in the Commerce Committee last year. And in June, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told POLITICO Cotton’s not alone in his opposition.
The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.
The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”
Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
