Trump steps up pressure on US Republicans to end US clock change | Donald Trump News

US President Donald Trump has increased pressure on US Senate Republicans to make daylight saving time permanent, accusing one of the body’s members of blocking legislation to end the twice-yearly time change.

In a social media post Saturday, Trump blasted U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton for “delaying” the Sunshine Protection Act, which Trump personally chose to call the “No More Changing of Clocks Act.”

“For some reason, Tom stops the bill, and in the Senate it’s very easy to do, it only takes one!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account about the Arkansas Republican. “This should pass overwhelmingly, in a bipartisan manner.”

“No one wants to spend their precious time running around, turning back the clock twice a year and it’s better to have sun in the afternoon than early in the morning!” he added.

Trump went even further, releasing what he claimed was Cotton’s phone number while imploring Arkansas residents to pressure him. The move echoed a moment during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, when then-candidate Trump gave out U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s number after his former rival criticized him.

Al Jazeera called the number listed in Trump’s message, but an automated message said the voicemail was full. Cotton’s spokesperson and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The president has steadily pushed Senate Republicans to pass legislation mandating daylight saving time year-round, which would end Americans’ decades-old practice of changing clocks twice a year to increase daylight hours. On Friday, Trump urged the U.S. Senate to approve the bill, which passed the House of Representatives in July by a vote of 308 to 117.

Cotton previously opposed the bill, arguing in a speech last year in the U.S. Senate that farmers, construction workers, commuters and children heading to school would start their days in the dark during the winter.

Trump disputed that argument in another post Saturday, saying the bill “would be a very nice and easy victory for the Republican Party.”

“If Tom Cotton prioritized Arkansas, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn’t have to run around their homes, farms, workplaces, and everywhere else, twice a year, changing their clocks and often forgetting to do so,” Trump wrote.

Trump, an avid golfer, also highlighted what he sees as another selling point of the bill: the North American Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) tour.

“The PGA TOUR, for example, needs more afternoon daylight to complete its tournaments,” he wrote in an article that included a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp supporting the bill. “So are regular golfers, tennis players, hunters and, perhaps most importantly, farmers who want more daylight to play or work.”

The US president, who spent part of Saturday at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, said in a later message that he had received personal feedback on the proposal: “I don’t know anyone else, but a table full of very distinguished people just told me that they HATE, immediately after a mandatory time change, to go home at night – and it’s DARK. It’s depressing!”

In 1974, the U.S. Congress briefly adopted year-round daylight saving time in response to the nation’s energy crisis. But Congress repealed the law less than a year later over safety concerns as children headed to school before sunrise.

U.S. senators left Washington this week and do not plan to return before the November 3 midterm elections.

Some members, like Sen. John Kennedy, were not optimistic that Senate Republican Leader John Thune would bring the bill to a vote before Election Day.

“It’s dead like disco,” the Louisiana Republican told Reuters this week of Trump’s effort to make daylight saving time permanent. “I feel like it would have a hard time passing…I don’t think the leader is going to talk about it.”