President Trump’s doxing of Sen. Tom Cotton over a stalled bill to establish year-round daylight saving time is throwing an unexpected twist in the Arkansas Republican’s reelection race and sets up a fierce fight in the Senate this fall over the biannual changing of clocks. Trump’s decision to publish Cotton’s cellphone number on his…
Page A3From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 6 October 2026
Trump doxes the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman's cellphone to pass a bill about clocks
As it ran on the front
The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House in July and then did what bills about clocks tend to do once they reach the Senate: it waited. Canada did not wait. Less than a week later, the Northwest Territories announced the same policy, and two Canadian jurisdictions had finished the job the United States Senate still had not started.
On October 2nd, with the Senate about to leave Washington for recess, he posted at length urging Republicans to pass the bill before they left town. The Senate did not take it up. On October 3rd he tried something no clock bill has required before: he posted what appeared to be Sen. Tom Cotton's personal cellphone number on Truth Social and told the public to call it. "Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill," he wrote. "For some reason, Tom..." The post ends there, mid-sentence, which is its own kind of answer.…
…(cont) Cotton chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. The senator whose committee decides what the government classifies had his own number handed to the public by the president, over a dispute about whether the sun sets at 4:30 or 5:30. He did not fold. By this week he was warning Arkansas about dark winter mornings, Fox News had the bill stuck at what it called a Senate wall, and The Hill was reporting the episode had thrown, in its words, "an unexpected twist" into Cotton's own reelection race back home.
Here's what the walk actually measures. A president who could not move a sitting committee chairman with the office, the party whip, or the bully pulpit reached for the one lever that still worked on him personally: publish the number, let strangers do the pressuring. It worked well enough to make news, and not well enough to move a vote. The number that mattered this week belonged to a senator with a staff, a security detail, and a campaign account to absorb the noise. The next number posted like this might not.
“They couldn't whip a vote, so they whipped out a phone number — the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a man whose whole job is guarding other people's secrets, and his own cell gets handed to strangers. That's not a public appeal, that's a loyalty test with an area code. Next time the number on the post isn't a senator's with a staff and a security detail behind it.”
“Look, the President's just giving people a direct line to their representative, that's accountability, that's democracy in action — okay, it's his personal cell, not the office line, I see how that reads. But Cotton's a public figure, he signed up for scrutiny — no, senators don't sign up to have their phone blow up over a clock bill, I'm aware of how that sounds. Did I say that? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
US president urges Americans to call Tom Cotton to support bill to make daylight saving time permanent Donald Trump on Saturday put pressure on the US senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas to support a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, urging Americans to call what appeared to be the personal cellphone number of his fellow Republican…
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President Donald Trump shared Tom Cotton's phone number to pressure the senator on the "Sunshine Protection Act," but Cotton warns of dark winter mornings.
· Trump releases Tom Cotton’s cellphone number over daylight savings bill from the morgue, 3 Oct 2026
· Trump posts GOP senator's cell phone number over daylight savings act stall from the morgue, 3 Oct 2026
· Permanent daylight saving time expands in Canada: 'Gives residents what they’ve asked us for' from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Trump revives push to pass Sunshine Protection Act ending daylight saving time from the morgue, 2 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.