Donald Trump Posted Tom Cotton’s Cellphone Number and Told Arkansas to Force Permanent Daylight Saving Time

Donald Trump did not spend Saturday on sleep, school buses, or the winter sun. He posted a phone number and called it a plan for daylight saving.

On October 3, 2026, he used Truth Social to target Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and told the state to call a number he presented as Cotton’s personal cellphone. He wanted permanent daylight saving time and a chorus of “GET IT DONE.” CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, y USA Today described the post. The digits are not repeated here. No newsroom reached a person who said he was Cotton, and USA Today could not confirm the line was his.

That is the story under the clock. The president treated a supposed private number for the senator who chairs intelligence oversight as a tip line. The pressure works even if the digits are wrong. Other Republicans can see what happens to a man Trump calls a friend.

CNN quoted him calling Cotton “a friend of mine” who was “holding up a very important Bill,” which Trump renamed the “We Don’t Want to Change Our Clocks Twice a Year Act.” He told “the Great People of Arkansas” the vote would be “a GREAT Bipartisan WIN,” bragged that he had carried the state three times, and finished with the pile-on. “Call Tom on his cellphone.”

CNN said the mailbox was full, then reached a recording that the wireless customer was unavailable. The New York Times heard a greeting for someone “temporarily unavailable,” with no immediate comment from Cotton’s office. Reuters, filing from Dayton, said the voicemail never identified him.

Asked why he published the number, Trump would not say. CNN reported that he complained about clocks instead, just before leaving the White House for a Republican midterm rally in Ohio. “(People) don’t want to have to go around changing clocks. I had the same thing last time, six months ago, we’re changing clocks, and nobody changed the clocks and everybody’s late,” he said. The AEGIS Alliance’s Vandalia report caught the same trip, after a protester was removed over the Epstein files. A missed reset became national policy, and the objector was named.

The Sunshine Protection Act cleared the House as a bargaining chip

The bill is H.R. 139, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, sponsored by Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida. Congress.gov shows the House passed it on July 14, 2026, by 308 to 117. The Senate received it the next day and left it in the Commerce Committee. It would make daylight saving time the year-round clock, which means a later winter sunrise, not new daylight.

Trump talks as if Cotton is the whole dam. He can block a fast unanimous-consent vote, but he is not alone. NOTUS reported on July 20 that Majority Leader John Thune said the issue “divides the country more by region” than almost anything else, and “It’s got a lot of opposition.” Senator Tommy Tuberville said Cotton would block it, then joked about extra golf.

NOTUS listed Commerce Committee senators in both parties who have voted against permanent daylight saving time, among them Thune, Roger Wicker, Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Dan Sullivan, Ted Budd, Tim Sheehy, Todd Young, Amy Klobuchar, Gary Peters, Tammy Duckworth, Jacky Rosen, and Lisa Blunt Rochester. Northern winters are not a personal snub. Trump’s line that “it only takes one” pretends otherwise.

Trump also skips why the House voted. The New York Times reported that leaders offered the daylight bill as a sweetener to Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who had frozen the floor to force a voting-restriction bill he wants. The “bipartisan win” started as a MAGA trade.

Forbes Breaking News posted the gaggle where a reporter asked why the number was online. Trump still did not answer.

Permanent daylight saving would push winter sunrise past the school bus

Cotton answered without naming Trump or the number. “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,” he wrote. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

That sunrise line is the part worth keeping. Cotton is otherwise a loyal MAGA vote, and “Arkansas first” is a slogan he uses when it helps. The cost he names is still real. Year-round daylight saving time sets the clock an hour ahead of the sun, so winter bus stops fall in the dark. The New York Times summarized his floor warning that the change “would push winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of morning sunshine that’s essential for our safety and well-being.”

Congress already tried this. Year-round daylight saving time began on January 6, 1974, during the oil shock. Anger over black mornings pushed lawmakers to reverse it the same year, and standard time returned in late October 1974. Cotton is citing that repeal. Trump writes as if one senator invented it.

Trump answered, CNN reported, that a senator putting Arkansas first would “give them an extra hour of daylight” and end the chore of resetting clocks. He attached a letter from PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp. The Hill reported the letter backed the bill and tied it to about 1 billion dollars a year in new golf revenue. A later tee time outranked a child in the dark.

WUSA9 walked through the exchange the next morning.

Sleep scientists want standard time, not a later sunset

Stopping the twice-yearly switch and locking in daylight saving time are different choices. Trump hides the second inside the popularity of the first.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, says the country should adopt permanent standard time because it fits human biology. “By causing the human body clock to be misaligned with the natural environment, daylight saving time increases risks to our physical health, mental well-being, and public safety,” said Dr. M. Adeel Rishi, chair of the academy’s public safety committee. “Permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety.”

The academy links the spring jump into daylight saving time with higher risk of heart attack and stroke. The Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the National Sleep Foundation, the Sleep Research Society, and the American Medical Association take the same view. Trump’s bill would lock in the later winter sunrise they warn against. The academy’s summary contradicts the golf letter.

Polls hate the clock switch and still do not crown this bill

Trump writes as if the public already chose his clock. It did not.

An AP-NORC poll of 1,289 adults in October 2025 found only 12 percent favor changing clocks twice a year, 47 percent oppose that system, and 40 percent are neutral. Forced to choose, 56 percent picked permanent daylight saving time and about 4 in 10 picked standard time.

Gallup’s January 2025 poll will not fit the slogan. Fifty-four percent opposed daylight saving time and 40 percent favored it, down from 73 percent support in 1999. Given three choices, 48 percent wanted standard time all year, 24 percent wanted daylight saving time all year, and 19 percent wanted to keep switching. His outcome finished last. Dislike of the chore is not a vote for his bill.

“Almost everybody wants” the Sunshine Protection Act is what he says when the Senate, the medical evidence, and the surveys refuse a simple order. Posting a supposed cellphone number is not consent. It is a search for callers.

Posting a private number is a habit, not a one-time slip

He has done this before. In the 2016 primary, after Lindsey Graham called him unfit for smearing Senator John McCain’s service, Trump read Graham’s cellphone number to a crowd. Graham smashed phones on video, then became an ally. Graham died on July 11, 2026, at 71, after an aortic dissection. The tactic remained.

Aiming that tactic at the Senate Intelligence Committee chair is worse than a rally bit. The job includes classified oversight, which is a reason not to make a personal line a show. Trump did it for a clock, a golf letter pitched around 1 billion dollars, and a complaint about lateness. Asked to explain, he would not. The post was the point.

A correct point about sunrise does not redeem Cotton. He is a MAGA Republican who picked one fight with a president he usually follows. Trump’s answer to that objection was a private number, not a vote count. The bill can still die in the Commerce Committee, where Thune says the opposition is real and where sleep research points to standard time. The pattern sits in politics coverage from The AEGIS Alliance and the news file. This is not sunshine. It is whether the Senate moves the morning because a president told a state to call a stranger.