Congress Advances Proposal to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent
“My Sunshine Protection Act will bring us one step closer to ending the outdated and unpopular practice of changing our clocks twice a year.”
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48-1 to advance the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act. The Sunshine Protection Act — a measure that would make daylight saving time permanent — is included in this legislation. The bill now moves to the House floor.
Following the vote, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), a primary sponsor of the Sunshine Protection Act, issued a statement that read:
My Sunshine Protection Act will bring us one step closer to ending the outdated and unpopular practice of changing our clocks twice a year. Floridians and Americans across the country are tired of the biannual time change, and the evidence is clear that permanent daylight saving time can improve public health, reduce traffic accidents, lower crime and encourage more outdoor activity.
Ending the clock change is a commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions of Americans.
And President Donald Trump has thrown his full support behind this initiative. In a Thursday Truth Social post, he wrote:
Big Vote today (48-1!) in the Energy and Commerce Committee on a Bill including The Sunshine Protection Act, which will be making Daylight Saving Time Permanent! This is so important in that Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are spent every year by people, Cities, and States, being forced to change their Clocks. Many of these Clocks are located in Towers, and the cost of renting, or using, Heavy Equipment to do this twice a year is prohibitive!
Trump added, “We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day — And who can be against that — This is an easy one!”
President Trump applauded House Republicans for advancing legislation to enact year-round daylight saving time, saying that he would “work very hard” to pass the bill and end the nation’s semiannual clock changes. https://t.co/4HYM0cCgKt
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 22, 2026
Well, actually, while many Americans applaud the end of the twice-yearly time changes, some are bemoaning the permanent adoption of daylight saving time instead of standard time.
Those who prefer permanent standard time usually argue that it aligns better with the body’s natural circadian rhythm — the body’s natural 24-hour internal clock that regulates sleep, wakefulness, and other daily biological functions. They also point out that noon during standard time is closer to when the sun is actually highest in the sky.
Proponents of standard time also note that more daylight earlier in the day can help children heading to school and commuters traveling in the morning. They may have a point. I recall a motorist in our town striking a child walking to a bus stop on the Monday after the switch to daylight saving time. The driver simply did not see the child in the darkness.
By contrast, supporters of permanent daylight saving time say they prefer having more daylight in the evening, which gives them more time for outdoor activities.
Contrary to historical belief, Benjamin Franklin did not invent daylight saving time. According to History.com:
By the time he was a 78-year-old American envoy in Paris in 1784, the man who espoused the virtues of “early to bed and early to rise” was not practicing what he preached. After being unpleasantly stirred from sleep at 6 a.m. by the summer sun, the founding father penned a satirical essay in which he calculated that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” As a result of this essay, Franklin is often erroneously given the honor of “inventing” daylight saving time, but he only proposed a change in sleep schedules—not the time itself.
A brief history of daylight saving time published by The University of Colorado (Boulder) says it originated with the Germans during World War I.
It was first introduced in Germany in 1916 during World War I as an energy saving measure, according to CU Boulder sleep researcher Kenneth Wright. The U.S. followed suit, adopting DST in 1918. Initially implemented as a wartime measure, it was repealed a year later.
Daylight saving time was reinstituted in 1942 during World War II. The next couple decades were a free-for-all, when states and localities switched between DST and standard time (ST) at will. To put an end to the clock chaos, Congress finally passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which standardized daylight saving time and its start and end dates across the country — with the exception of Hawaii and Arizona, which opted to keep standard time year-round.
During the energy crisis of 1974, the U.S. decided to adopt permanent DST. However, after the first winter of dark mornings, public support dropped so low that it was repealed.
Regardless of which system prevails, polls have repeatedly shown that Americans will likely welcome an end to the twice-yearly time changes. A 2021 Ipsos poll found that over two-thirds of Americans supported ending daylight saving time. And a more recent AP-NORC poll, conducted in October 2025, showed just 12% supported the practice.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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Comments
gee wonder what kind of pork they’ll attach to that 3 foot putt.
I wonder what poison pill they will throw in to make it unpassable.
What already exists in that orwellian-named “Motor Vehicle Modernization Act” before things get added in the process?
Just pick one. And if businesses or school districts, want to change the time that they start or end, let them do it.
I have at least seven clocks in my house.
I find it to be a very hard adjustment, which is odd, because it’s only one hour, and I am retired.
Just pick one!
I have TWO clocks that need changing; the rest are all self-adjusting.
And, until I can find a place near my sister in law’s up in the Couer d’Alene area, my clocks don’t need changing. I’m in Arizona and not “on the rez”, where DST is often practiced.
Grizz, you don’t have ANY clocks that need changing! You live in Arizona now!
I know. And all of the analogs are on 24 hour display.
Oh, waitaminnit! If this bill passes. ALL our clocks will need changing, because they’re standardizing on the wrong standard (DST).
Yeah I hate the time change. I’m always forgetting when it occurs. An unnecessary pain in the butt.
With all the problems that we have, with the Union on the edge of dissolving, THIS is what they are spending time on??????
Subotai Bahadur
Look at the bright side: they aren’t hitting us with another tax, energy boondoggle, or federal holiday for a race hustler.
Aw, come on, you killjoy.
It’s a nice training-wheels bill they can use to remember how to actually PASS s*t.
And my 2016 card says they’ll STILL fall off it and skin they little knees.
2016? OMG, it’s Alzheimer’s. Who’s the President again?
Well…we DO need to know when kickoff is scheduled.
If you view it as a way of stopping trying to overcome reality, Subotai, you can much more easily justify it in our current circumstances.
“Congress finally passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which standardized daylight saving time and its start and end dates across the country — with the exception of Hawaii and Arizona, which opted to keep standard time year-round.”
Minor quibble. Most of Indiana was on permanent Eastern Standard time during this period as well. There were counties in the NW (near Chicago) and SW that were on Central time and followed DST, but most of Indiana did not.
I grew up in one of the “fixed” time counties in Indiana. The only artifact of DST for us was that twice a year, our favorite network TV shows changed their broadcast times. I always thought that was odd, but as a kid, it was just one of those wonders of the world.
I became aware of DST as I got older, but I never heard “spring forward, fall back” until I was an adult in the Navy.
That, of course, changed in 2005 or 6 when Indiana surrendered to the borg and was assimilated wholly into DST.
Growing up without the idiocy of having to change clocks twice a year, I’m especially annoyed by it. I really don’t care which time standard they pick, just pick one and stick to it. Changing back and forth is retarded.
In Arizona the clock stays the same (we never wanted later sunsets) but the kickoff times are distorted. When they expanded DST we were left with only one month of college football without games at 9:00am.
It should be fixed at standard time. It’s pointless for clock noon to be so far removed from actual solar noon.
This. There is no reason whatever to stay on DST all year.
For me, at least, it is far removed during Standard time. But I could live with Standard if I could be shown that I’m an outlier. But, I’m betting it’s true across more of the country than otherwise.
YEAH!!!!!
I’m old enough to remember the last time we did this. No surprise it was sponsored by folks in the south where the swings in daylight between summer and winter are less.
This will be much less popular when kids start getting killed going to school in the winter months.
Oh, for crying out loud. How about using other means to prevent accidents than trying to overcome reality?
I don’t know what color the sky is on your planet but in my reality it is difficult to see in the dark when your school day starts before our sun rises.
What reality? Standard time is based on reality. The cynically misnamed “daylight savings time” not only does not add even one minute to the length of the day, it’s also based on a fantasy, not on reality.
Really paying attention to reality would mean going back to local time, with each city keeping its time based on where the sun is in its location. But as the railroads found in the 19th century that leads to disasters, so standard time means everyone in a large zone keeps the time of one spot in that zone. But at least in that spot the time is based on reality. DST abandons reality altogether.
I wonder what would happen if the people, on an individual basis, decided en masse “To hell with it, I’m living on standard time.”
A bunch of them would get fired for coming to work late during part of the year.
I don’t care one way or the other. But if they want to keep it the same all year round I vote for standard time because it sucks when mornings are dark until 8AM.
So, your argument is “Stop the world, I want to get off”? Because that’s a fact of life above some latitude – unless you’re going to continue the insane “our brains can overcome reality” concept of switching times twice a year.
I just want the sun overhead at noon so I can set my expectations properly. As it is, the numbers we use are pretty much arbitrary across huge swaths of our time zones.
No, that is not reality. When nature has it get light and 7:00, and we artificially change that to 8:00, that’s not reality. Standard time is reality, or at least as close as we can get to it while avoiding train crashes, and having to change our clocks every time we drive from one town to the next. “DST” is the one that ignores reality.
The biggest issue I have with it besides adjusting the body to the changes is that just as you get past the blinding sun in your face on the drive to work the time changes and the blinding sun is in your face on the drive to work.
Just move to the EAST of your office!
DST ‘saves’ nothing. IT just makes you think the sun is rising/setting one hour later.
What’s that old Indian saying? “Only a white man could cut one foot off the end of a blanket, sew it on the other end and call it longer.”
While I’m technically olde enough I don’t really remember it but Gemini says we tried year round DST once starting about January 1974. It was so unpopular in northern states where the sun didn’t rise until after 8am during the winter months that it was repealed in about a year. I don’t know if enough population has shifted south and west to make it more acceptable but I kinda doubt it.
If we stop changing the clocks we should retain standard time rather than DST.
Yeah, it was one of Gerry Ford’s “answers” to the OPEC Energy Crisis.
Actually Nixon, the bill was signed before he resigned.
The ultimate in stupid ideas was W championing moving the start and end of DST out two weeks which put us out of step with everybody else who observes DST. It’s bad enough juggling meetings across 7 hours of time zones without the additional brain twister of whether they are observing DST or not.
Standard time, it seems, is not really accurate for a lot of people. I know the sun is most certainly not directly overhead at noon during Standard time where I live. Daylight Savings puts it closer.
It depends on where you live relative to the time zone line. I spent 40 years in Iowa which is about in middle of the Central time zone and then moved to Louisville which is on the far west edge of the Eastern time zone. The difference in perceived time is quite distinct. Iowa has a few days where sunset is about 8:45pm while Louisville has long stretches of days with sunsets after 9pm.
That makes it hard for me to believe that DST noon is actually closer to real noon in most locations.
Daylight Savings puts it closer.
No, it does not. It puts it farther away. Standard time means that somewhere in your time zone, the average time of noon is 12:00. DST means that somewhere in your zone the average is 1:00, and nowhere is it 12:00.
We have time zones because the railroads adopted them to avoid crashes. That was a necessary compromise on reality. But there’s no reason to make it worse with so-called “DST”, which saves neither daylight nor energy.
the outdated and unpopular practice of changing our clocks twice a year
I think we should only change them once a year. Forward one year, back the next. The “savings” would work out the same.
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/waits for the angry rebuttals by those whose snark detectors are broken/
My fundamental problem with “adjusting” our clocks twice a year is that it’s solely due to people who really think we can overcome reality by changing the setting on a mechanical/electronic device. The idea of overcoming, somehow, when the sun rises and sets is entirely a Progressive idea rooted in overthrowing Nature and Nature’s God. It’s all about changing reality to fit what WE want, yet, what we’re really doing is just pretending.
And yet you support being permanently an hour ahead of where nature puts us?!
What else did you expect? They “understand” economics exactly the same way. Wage and price controls, eating the rich, criminalizing “gouging.” Push on any one of those things, and the economy bulges predictably somewhere else to compensate.
I like the idea of not shifting, but I’d rather stay on standard than on DST.
The big lie is that “DST” saves daylight and energy. Actually it wastes energy; having more of the day when we’re awake was supposed to mean we spend less on lighting, but instead it means we spend more on air conditioning!
I don’t know about where you live, but we don’t shut the A/C off just because we’re asleep.
It’s usually cooler at night, so less AC is needed. Making the afternoon longer just so you don’t have to turn on the light, but thereby making you keep the AC on longer, wastes energy.
Atomic clocks make the day unreliable – some switch some don’t, depending on who gets the signal. On top of that, certain La Crosse atomic clocks have a firmware bug that makes the spring forward after falling back at the next UTC day, and vice versa in the spring. Autumn example (with WWV audio off the radio)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUOQIeNCisc
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