President Trump is pressing Senate Republicans to end the twice-a-year clock change and make daylight saving time permanent, blaming Sen. Tom Cotton for stalling a bill the House already passed.
In an early Friday Truth Social post, Trump called the ritual a “ridiculous Clock changing process” that drains money, worsens crime and stress, and disrupts sports and daily life. He urged the Senate to finish what the House started and stop forcing Americans to reset their clocks every spring and fall.
The Hill reported that Trump is ramping up pressure on Senate Republicans behind legislation he dubbed the “No More Changing of Clocks Act,” the permanent daylight saving time measure known in the House as the Sunshine Protection Act.
The House already cleared that bill in July on a 308-117 vote. The Senate has not moved it. Trump said Cotton is holding the effort up “for reasons unknown.”
Trump’s case is blunt: people prefer evening light, and the old system no longer makes sense.
Trump wrote that Americans “don’t want to go around changing their Clocks anymore” and that “far and away, most people like having an hour of extra sunlight in the evening, rather than in the morning.”
“A ridiculous Clock changing process that takes place twice a year, costs our Country a fortune, is bad for Crime, stress on people, Sports, and just about everything else you can imagine,”
he posted, arguing the practice is “foolish, inconvenient and, in some cases, very costly.” He added that people are “sick and tired” of the twice-yearly switch and claimed even most farmers would rather keep extra evening time for harvest work.
He has also argued that lasting evening daylight would help cut crime and traffic accidents and benefit public health and industry. That is the policy pitch he is now pushing onto Senate Republicans who control the chamber’s calendar.
Republican unity on other fights has been uneven this Congress, including moments when the House passed an Iran war powers resolution with GOP defections. Clock policy is a different kind of test: broad public irritation colliding with one senator’s long-standing objection.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has been one of the most vocal Republican opponents of year-round daylight saving time. Trump still endorsed Cotton’s reelection bid, but he is now calling the Arkansas senator the roadblock.
Cotton’s warning, delivered last year, focused on winter mornings. He said permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise later and leave children heading to school, and millions commuting to work, in the dark.
“If permanent daylight saving time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans,”
Cotton said. That is the core trade-off in the fight: brighter evenings versus darker starts to the winter day.
Trump framed Cotton’s hold as unexplained. The reporting does not spell out a formal procedural freeze beyond Trump’s charge and Cotton’s public opposition. What is clear is the vote math and the history.
The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House in July with a wide 308-117 margin. Getting it through the Senate is harder. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has cast doubt on whether the measure can secure the 60 votes needed to advance under normal Senate rules.
That 60-vote threshold is the same procedural wall that shapes other Senate outcomes, including recent fights such as when Senate Democrats stopped the Husted bill on power costs. On clocks, the hurdle is bipartisan support plus Republican cohesion.
The Senate has been here before. In 2022, senators unanimously passed a similar permanent daylight saving time bill. It then stalled in the House. This time the House has acted first, and the Senate is the holdup.
Trump’s public pressure is aimed at breaking that pattern before another spring-forward or fall-back cycle arrives.
Congress has tested permanent daylight saving time. In early 1974, during the energy crisis, lawmakers moved most of the country to year-round daylight saving time. They ended the experiment that fall after the darker winter mornings drew a backlash.
Cotton’s “dark and dismal” line echoes that history. Trump’s answer is that the public has moved on, prefers evening light, and no longer wants the cost and disruption of changing clocks twice a year. The House vote suggests many members agree. The Senate has not yet shown it can finish the job.
Midterm-year legislative fights often turn on whether leaders force votes or let objections quietly kill popular bills, a dynamic also visible when Speaker Johnson urged a resolution on Iran under pressure on vulnerable Republicans. Clock legislation is lower drama than foreign policy, but the accountability question is the same: act, or stall.
The policy itself is easy to understand. Permanent daylight saving time would keep the later sunsets year-round and end the twice-a-year reset. Supporters, led now by Trump’s public campaign, say that matches how people actually live, work, play sports, and shop. Opponents, led in the GOP conference by Cotton, say winter school and work mornings would be too dark.
No injuries, closures, or official cost score appear in the current reporting. The concrete facts on the table are the House roll call, the Senate’s inaction, Thune’s doubt about 60 votes, Cotton’s winter-morning warning, and Trump’s sustained push to move the bill.
Institutional wins elsewhere have stacked up for Trump in recent months, from court fights to executive authority, including when the Supreme Court freed Trump’s team to verify voter citizenship with federal data. Ending clock changes would be a quality-of-life win rather than a courtroom one, if Senate Republicans allow a vote.
Trump has named the obstacle, restated the public case, and put Senate Republicans on notice. The House already did its part with a lopsided vote. Whether the Senate clears permanent daylight saving time, or keeps the old twice-a-year shuffle by default, is now a choice leaders own in full view.
Americans should not need a twice-yearly reminder that Congress can fix a small, obvious irritation and still chooses delay.