President Trump on Friday demanded the Senate pass a bill to make daylight saving time permanent and blamed Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, for stalling it.
With a month until the end of daylight saving time, Mr. Trump slammed the “ridiculous Clock changing process,” which he says increases stress and crime.
Citing the House’s 308-117 approval of the bill in July, he urged the Senate to get to work.
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“It’s now up to the U.S. Senate where it would be another Great Bipartisan Victory,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Unfortunately, it’s being held up by Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, for reasons unknown.”
Mr. Cotton chairs the Senate Republican Conference.
His office did not provide comment on Mr. Trump’s post, instead referring to an October 2025 floor speech.
In the speech, Mr. Cotton recalled that in 1974, Congress cut short an experiment with year-round daylight saving time because of public uproar over extended morning darkness.
He argued that another implementation of year-round daylight saving time would again threaten the “quality of life” and “safety” of early risers, such as construction workers and children waiting for school buses.
“A shift to permanent daylight saving time would make it harder to go to sleep at night and harder to wake up in the morning,” he said.
The Senate is on recess and not scheduled to return for legislative business until after the midterms, leaving a narrow window for the chamber to act on the House-passed bill.
However, the lame-duck session is likely to be busy, with senators focused on priorities such as annual funding bills, reauthorizing federal surveillance powers and advancing permitting reforms.
Hawaii, much of Arizona, Puerto Rico, and various U.S. islands in the Caribbean and Pacific don’t observe daylight saving time.
The Sunshine Protection Act would preserve those areas’ ability to opt out of the bill’s time change.
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