While permanent daylight saving time would cause the sun to set later in winter, the sun would, in turn, rise later in the morning.
Page F116From§Eachthe morning edition — 11 October 2026
Trump uses a senator's personal phone to push a clock change that darkens school bus stops.
As it ran on the front
On October 3rd the president posted what appeared to be the personal cellphone number of Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and told the public to call it, to push a bill that had already cleared one chamber. The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent, passed the House in July. It has sat in the Senate since. Cotton chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. On October 3rd his phone also became, briefly, the number for a scheduling dispute.
Three days later, on October 6th, Cotton's Democratic opponent, Hallie Shoffner, answered a question about the fight on MS NOW. Asked whether daylight saving time had come up with voters over the course of her 450-day campaign, she said: "not once." That is the figure, and it comes from her, not from a filing.…
…(cont) That is a paraphrase as the Examiner reported it, not a quotation, and it is treated that way here.
Five days later, on October 11th, The Hill supplied the arithmetic missing from the debate so far. Permanent daylight saving time does not create daylight. It moves it. If the sun sets an hour later on a December afternoon, it also rises an hour later on a December morning. The legislation does not mention bus stops. The data does.
Reconcile the ledger as filed. One line: a personal phone number, published, to move one vote. One line: 450 days of campaign contact producing zero voter-raised mentions of the underlying bill. One line: a measured shift in sunrise time with a specific consequence for children standing outside before light. These three lines do not close against each other. They close only against the same four words: Sunshine Protection Act.
That's the gap, hon. A policy with a counted cost to children's mornings is moving through one senator's personal line, not through a hearing room. The receipts do not say who asked for that phone call.
“The President doesn't go through a committee, he goes through one guy's cell phone and tells the whole country to start dialing. That's not legislating, that's a group chat about clocks. And the only people who actually show up for the extra daylight part are second graders standing at a bus stop before the sun does.”
“Look, when the President personally calls for permanent daylight saving time, that's leadership, direct, no lobbyists, no middlemen, just a guy with a phone — did I just call the President a guy with a phone? Strike that. And sure, the data shows winter sunrise gets later for kids, but that's a scheduling detail, it's not like there's a specific hour written down anywhere... there is? Okay, moving on.”
The receipts
· Trump appears to share personal phone number of US senator in ploy to push permanent daylight savings from the morgue, 3 Oct 2026
· Hallie Shoffner says Cotton and Trump have wrong priorities in daylight saving time fight from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
· Cotton's opponent: 'Not once' has daylight saving time come up on campaign trail from the morgue, 6 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.