WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump escalated the nation’s oldest fight about microwave clocks Saturday by posting Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number and encouraging Americans to call him about permanent daylight saving time.
The Associated Press verified the Arkansas number, called it and found the voicemail full—proof that democracy still works if your definition of democracy is “thousands of strangers leaving clock opinions after the beep.”
The dispute centers on the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the House in July and would make daylight saving time permanent. Cotton opposes the bill, arguing that year-round daylight time has failed before and would leave children waiting for school buses in dangerously dark winter mornings.
Spring forward, privacy backward
Trump favors locking in later evening sunlight and has complained that changing clocks twice a year is confusing, inconvenient and terrible for golf. This is the rare national debate in which both sides agree the clocks are annoying but disagree over which part of the day should look like the opening scene of a crime documentary.
After Trump published the number, Cotton restated his opposition. Trump answered again, insisting Arkansas would benefit from more evening daylight and less household clock maintenance.
The fictional Department of Temporal Retaliation then issued guidance stating that any senator blocking a time bill may have his contact information moved forward one hour without consent.
The world’s angriest kitchen clock
Only 12% of Americans supported the current twice-yearly clock-changing system in a 2025 AP-NORC poll. The remaining public was divided between permanent daylight time, permanent standard time and simply leaving the oven clock wrong until the power goes out.
Congress has wrestled with permanent daylight saving time repeatedly. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2022, but it died in the House. Earlier experiments with year-round daylight time were reversed after Americans discovered that “more evening sun” also means “breakfast in a coal mine.”
For now, the bill remains stalled, Cotton’s voicemail remains unavailable and every appliance in America is preparing to display a different time for six months.