President Donald Trump has intensified efforts to make daylight saving time permanent, targeting Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in a public appeal. Over the weekend, Trump took to social media to urge Arkansans to contact Cotton, sharing what appeared to be the senator’s personal cellphone number online and calling on him to support the Sunshine Protection Act.
The proposed legislation, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July, has faced resistance in the Senate. Supporters argue that making daylight saving time permanent would provide an extra hour of evening sunlight and eliminate the hassle of changing clocks twice a year. Detractors, however, point to the potential hazards of darker winter mornings, which could impact the safety of schoolchildren and commuters.
Trump’s message quickly raised tensions, especially as Cotton, who is up for reelection in November, firmly declined to back the measure. Taking to social media in response, Cotton stated that Congress had previously repealed permanent daylight saving time due to harmful late sunrises. He added that Arkansans do not want children commuting to school “in the pitch dark,” emphasizing that he will “always put Arkansas first.”
In a sharp rebuttal, Trump argued that making daylight saving time permanent would be the true way to prioritize Arkansas, pointing to the convenience of eliminating biannual clock changes and adding evening daylight.
Phone calls to the number Trump posted reportedly went unanswered, and the voicemail box was full, according to the Associated Press.
A 2025 poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 47% of U.S. adults oppose the current system of clock changes, while only 12% favor keeping it. Nonetheless, the future of the Sunshine Protection Act remains uncertain in the Senate as lawmakers continue to deliberate the potential societal impacts.