The battle over Americans clocks reemerged in an unlikely way over the weekend, with President Donald Trump picking a fight with one of his top allies over the issue.
There have been many fights in Congress over the nearly two years that Trump has been in office for his second term that either ended in partisan victory or gloriously fizzled out, but one has quietly gone onto the shelf despite his pressure on Republicans to do something about it.
And that fight is over allowing states to voluntarily observe Daylight Saving Time year-round to effectively do away with the twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks. Its a popular issue with voters and the president, and theres a bill that passed the House this summer to enact the change. But its a policy issue that has divided both sides of the aisle and ground to a halt in the upper chamber.
TRUMP URGES SENATE TO PASS BILL MAKING DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME PERMANENT AFTER OVERWHELMING HOUSE VOTE
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has been one of the more vocal opponents of the bill, vowing to block any attempts to fast-track it on the floor. That resistance earned him a Truth Social post from Trump, who over the weekend shared his personal phone number in a bid to pressure the lawmaker to change his stance on Daylight Saving Time.
“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump said. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
Cotton responded, and noted that Congress has tackled Daylight Saving Time before, only to roll back the change shortly after.
“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Saving Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton said on X. “Arkansans dont want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and Ill always put Arkansas first.”
TRUMP FACES REPUBLICAN REBELLION OVER DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME AS SENATE BILL NEARS DEAD END
In the 1970s, lawmakers did enact year-round Daylight Saving Time. But Americans rapidly soured on the change, especially parents whose children had to wait in the dark for the school bus. It was repealed about a year later.
And Cotton recently answered an off-the-cuff question from a fellow Republican during their weekly closed-door policy lunches, a source told Fox News Digital, where he made a similar case as his response to Trump. No one pushed back during the meeting.
The issue of Daylight Saving Time, and supporting a permanent fix or sticking to the status quo is more geographical than political.
Its, in part, mountainous and Western states versus coastal states. On one side of the spectrum are lawmakers like Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Patty Murray, D-Wash
