Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is refusing to budge on blocking the Sunshine Protection Act, a bill that would lock the country into permanent daylight saving time, despite a public pressure campaign from President Donald Trump.
The U.S. House passed the bill 308-117 in July, but it has stalled in the Senate. Trump shared Cotton’s cell phone number in a post on Truth Social, urging supporters to call the senator directly and push him to drop his opposition.
Cotton responded on X, arguing history is on his side. “No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton wrote.
“Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”
Trump fired back in a separate Truth Social post, accusing Cotton of failing his own state. “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 said. “That is really putting Arkansas FIRST, and I know, because, unlike Tom, I won that Great State, three times, and by almost 40 points!”
Trump noted that the House “approved, long ago, ‘The Sunshine Protection Act,’ by a very Bipartisan Vote, 308 to 117,” and said it “has been held up in the Senate, a place where things go to die, by Tom Cotton, for months!”
Trump also offered a theory for why past attempts at permanent daylight saving time collapsed. “The reason that it was terminated in the past was that certain Congressmen and Senators, from long ago, used it as a ‘negotiating chip’ for far more important Legislation — And they got plenty!” he wrote. “Everybody loved it, but it was given up in order to get bigger, better, and more consequential ‘things.'”
Cotton has not signaled any shift in position since the exchange, leaving the bill stuck in the Senate.
