Trump Urges Senate to Pass Permanent Daylight Saving Time Bill
A similar act passed in 1973 started out as popular, but its fanbase quickly waned.
President Donald Trump is urging the U.S. Senate to stop running out the clock on a House-approved plan to make daylight saving time permanent.
The goal is to end the semiannual ritual of changing clocks that most Americans have come to loathe.
The House of Representatives approved a bill earlier this year to thrust the nation onto permanent daylight saving time. In other words, the House voted to ditch the twice-a-year ritual of springing forward and falling back. Now it’s up to the Senate to sync up.
“Around the country, people are going to be excited because they don’t have to go back and forth,” opined Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., one of the biggest advocates of shifting to year-round daylight saving time.
Under this temporal regime, Florida and many southern states would benefit from “more” sun later in the afternoon and evening in the winter.
I am the first to admit that I despise the annual “Spring Forward” time change. However, this plan does have many fans.
I'd much rather wake up, shower, dress, eat breakfast and get to work/school before sunrise and have extra daylight after work/school to do family things before sunset.
Bring on permanent Daylight Savings Time, despite the stupid name. pic.twitter.com/gDp01uIl8b
— Shawn Sonnentag (@ShawnSonnentag) August 17, 2026
Yet this approach has been tried before. In response to the 1973 oil embargo and energy crisis, Congress passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973
This act put most of the country on DST continuously for an intended trial of roughly 16 months. Though it sounded appealing at the time, the move became very unpopular.
At first, the emergency daylight saving time bill signed into law by President Richard Nixon was well-liked. In December 1973, it had a nearly 80% approval rate, according to the New York Times.
By February, that had dropped to 42%.
Soon, parents were sending their children off to school in morning darkness — in some parts of the country, the sun would not rise until nearly 9 a.m. — armed with flashlights, prompting safety concerns. There were multiple incidents nationwide of children being struck by vehicles while on their way to school, including eight fatalities in Florida.
The U.S. Department of Transportation found no clear evidence on traffic accidents in relation to year-round daylight saving time and determined that energy savings were a meager 0.4% to 1.5%.
Interestingly, concerns about dark mornings have also led to bipartisan opposition to this proposal.
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, has argued against permanent daylight saving time, warning that winter mornings would become darker for children and workers in parts of the country. Cotton spoke against the Sunshine Protection Act on the Senate floor in October 2025.
Other senators who have voted against permanent DST include Ted Budd, Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Tim Sheehy, Dan Sullivan, Roger Wicker and Todd Young on the Republican side, and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Tammy Duckworth, Amy Klobuchar, Gary Peters and Jacky Rosen among Democrats, as reported by CBS News.
Some medical experts also argue that changes to the timing of natural light could have unintended consequences.
Dr. Daniel Rongo, a UT Health physician who specializes in sleep medicine, says the body relies on morning light as a natural signal.
“Our bodies know when it’s daytime and our body knows when to go to sleep,” Dr. Rongo said.
He says early morning light is especially important because the body naturally reacts to it when we wake up.
He says that misalignment can lead to real-world consequences.
…“Such as sleep deprivation and feeling sleepy at times where we really should be awake, especially during driving, whenever we’re at school, trying to do our jobs,” he said.
The 1974 experiment shows that permanent daylight saving time may sound appealing in theory, but the lived reality of dark winter mornings can quickly turn public enthusiasm into opposition.
I will continue to hate the Monday after “Spring Forward,” but I also enjoy fall’s return to Standard Time and the morning light it restores.
If the Senate remains unmoved by Trump’s arguments, Americans are likely to keep the twice-yearly clock change for the foreseeable future.
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Comments
No no no
Actually yes. More daylight in the evenings is better for everyone. You know that. You just dont want to accept that G! 😁
Pick one ti.e & stick with it. Then adjust the start times for work & school accordingly. Star at 7am; start at 9am; whatever
Thank you, Owen!
An engineer’s “strength” and “weakness” is they are myopic and detail oriented; though rarely able to see the “bigger picture” and beyond the near-term application of the decision then before them. A breed of “intellectuals” as Thomas Sowell has defined them.
I would prefer permanent Standard Time.
yes, yes, yes, yes
I love the fall hour hate the spring loss. So I’m neutral.
Standard Time! So…. follow the money.
Most of the stupidity was having to manually change clocks.
It’s much less annoying now that clocks autoadjust.
It’s still dumb and arbitrary. Pick a time, enough with this ‘adjustment’.
I have at least 8 clocks in my home I have to change. More in the cars.
Please no. I would like to remove two-three weeks from DST, but we need to keep the change.
I agree wholeheartedly. The change to the starting and ending dates of DST was another one of W’s horrid compromises with Democrats, and all around bad policy decisions. It put us out of step for at least 3 weeks every year with every other Western country (none of whom have extended DST) and shortened the period of Standard Time to roughly 18 weeks from 22. This is why it feels like hardly any of the year is in Standard Time. This is the change we should be making – return the beginning of DST to the first Sunday in April and end it with the last Sunday in October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7gxsGAsugA
No, this would be a nightmare here in Boise. At this latitude on December 21 there is a full 6-1/2 hours less daylight than in June. Even on standard time sunrise isn’t until nearly 0800. DST would make sunrise at 9:00 am. Southern latitudes have less variation in daylight between summer and winter.
You know you’re still getting the exact same number of daylight hours in a 24 hour period right?
That’s a ridiculous argument. The entire premise of DST is having daylight when people are awake. Most people are awake before 9am.
Th USA is a continental size Nation just in the ‘lower 48’ and most people in the USA choose to reside where dawn breaks before 9AM. Anyone negatively impacted by the proposal in their current location can move to another location …or not, but it is their choice.
That is a terribly incorrect assumption. In fact, under permanent DST most of the continental US would not see the sunrise until between 8 and 9am, rather than 7 to 8 am
https://conormclaughlin.net/img/permanent_dst/sunrise_timing_map_winter_solstice_2022.png
here’s a link to Mclaughlin’s longer article on the impact
https://conormclaughlin.net/2022/04/visualizing-the-impact-of-permanent-daylight-savings-time-on-winter-sunrise-and-sunset-times/
Even more starkly, the majority of the US population is in the eastern portion of the Eastern Time zone, which would definitely experience much later sunrises per Mclaughlin’s maps, in addition to the impact on the population around the Great Lakes including Chicago as well as the upper Midwest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1g3ytxw/over_50_of_the_us_population_live_in_the_yellow/#lightbox
The only area that wouldn’t be negatively affected is the far west and southern portions of each time zone.
Christopher B, you have that backwards. The eastern portions of each time zone are those that would be the least affected. It’s the western portions of each time zone where the effect would be greatest. Sunrise is already late in those areas; this would make it an hour later than that.
Just think about it and you’ll see how this is obvious. The sun moves east to west (or rather the earth rotates west to east). If at your latitude, on a given day, the sun is supposed to rise at 7:00 AM, then if you are exactly on the line of longitude to which your time zone is calibrated (e.g. 75W for EST) then the sun will rise for you at 7:00. If you are east of that line you will see the sun rise before 7; the farther east you are, the earlier you’ll see it. And the farther west of the line you are, the later you’ll see it. If you’re in South Bend you’ll see it at about 7:45.
DST only makes that worse by adding an hour so 7:45 becomes 8:45.
Christopher B.
You do know the ‘sun rises in the East’ right? The DST ‘problem’ of the timing of dawn would be in the western areas and in the higher latitudes of the Western portions of the zones.
I really don’t care if we pick Standard or DST so long as pick one and keep it in place though I’d vastly prefer standard be adopted but I also am very aware that my little personal preference isn’t enough to override a Nationwide decision impacting everyone.
The folks in the areas where dawn is occurring later in the morning can simply adjust the timing of their daily routine. It isn’t set in stone that school MUST start at 07:30 or that school buses gotta run at 06:30. If dawn doesn’t break until 0830 then back up the start of the bus routes and the start of the school day. same could be done by local businesses if sunlight is an issue. If the State/local Govt and maybe the utilities did so by setting an example it would probably be an easier sell to private businesses to go along with the ‘new normal’ adjustment. Frankly they should be doing it now if safety is the objection.
A lot of folks work nights now. Cops and other 1st responders often have a 23:00 to 07:00 shift as one example. Heck install Street lights or in very rural areas some decent solar powered lights at bus stops and rethink the location of pick ups to account for any traffic danger in low visibility conditions.
It really isn’t that hard to figure out a workable solution to this potential shift with a little goodwill and creativity.
My only problem with the time-change system is that it is very difficult to explain to a cat that his breakfast isn’t really an hour late.
Finally a comment which addresses the issue in real terms of living.
Fix it one way or the other. It really doesn’t matter because after time schools and businesses will adjust accordingly. If the change one way doesn’t work schools will adjust their schedules in one direction. If it doesn’t work the other way they’ll adjust their hours in the other direction. What’s the big deal as long as we don’t flop back-and-forth twice a year?
Exactly. Pick one and stick with it. People, institutions both public and private can make adjustments to make it work. If that still.doesn’t satisfy a particular person in a particular location …that individual can always choose to move to location where the clock more closely matches their notions of the ‘correct’ dawn/dusk.
As an example…one of my Division Commanders tried out a ‘reverse cycle’ of the duty day. Usually the first formation in the Army is an accountability formation at 06:30 followed by physical training till 07:30 then released until 09:00 ‘work call’ with duty day ending ‘officially’ at 17:00. Instead he moved ‘work call’ to 08:00 and combined it with an accountability formation. Then held an afternoon accountability formation at 15:45 followed by physical training till 16:45 and end of duty day.
Almost everyone liked the change. Soldiers who were Parents had time to eat breakfast with and drive children to school. B/C there was a release at 16:45 following PT it forced the subordinate unit commanders to set clear, achievable priorities of work and demonstrate they could effectively manage time, resources to accomplish their mission within the limits of the duty day instead of having ‘new ideas’ inspire them at 17:00 forcing everyone to stay late to get it done by 09:00 the next day. The piss poor incompetent/uncaring subordinate leaders got exposed and absolutely hated being held directly accountable while the good leadership liked it and the troops loved it.
He needed to AI generate a comic for a tweet because he’s never documented or even remembered a time he enjoyed daylight savings.
Retire this stupid thing
If I were King, I would proclaim year-round Standard Time.
I’m absolutely for ending daylight savings time but the bill as written artificially and permanently disrupts circadian time. Revise it, send it back to House and then pass it.
I’d offer a compromise of a 30 minute adjustment toward DST from standard time. Some countries do it, and Newfoundland does as well.
The original standard time for each zone was engineered to be the time at which noon was when the sun was most closely at zenith. That gives you equal mornings and evenings. Now, why take every existing zone and say you’re going to offset them permanently by one hour so that NONE of them match solar behavior? There’s no way you’re going to convince me that a time that is not accurate for anybody is more convenient for anybody.
I can’t for the life of me understand how so many people seem to think that if we want to get rid of the back-and-forth changes then we must stick ourselves permanently in the wrong time zone. I agree on getting rid of the change, but I want us permanently in the correct zone. Permanent standard time.
As it is, standard time is inconvenient for people on the western edge of each time zone, because standard time runs as much as 45 minute ahead of the natural time that the sun says it is. Take Western Michigan, for instance, or South Bend. On DST, they’re 1:45 ahead of where they should be. But we’re used to Standard Time, and we can’t go back to each town having its own local time according to the sun, as was the case before the railroads invented standard time in 1883. At least let’s get rid of the completely unnecessary additional hour.
The original idea seems to have been that it would save energy because we would have another hour of not needing electric lights, gas lights, or candles; but nowadays it just means an extra hour of running the air conditioner, so it actually wastes energy.
On the other hand, there is the example of France. When the Germans occupied France they changed it over to German time, for their own convenience. So for instance western Brittany, which even under standard time is about 20 min ahead of the sun, became 1:20 ahead in winter, and 2:20 in summer. After the war, instead of switching back, the French decided they liked being so far ahead of the sun, and kept it. That’s why if you’re in France in the summer the day seems interminable; in late June the sun sets in Paris at 10:00 PM, and at the western tip of Brittany at 10:25 PM. This seems crazy to me, but the French seem to like it.
Why not abolish DST completely?
Daylight in Anchorage is roughly 4:30 am to 11:30 pm in June, and 10 am to 3:45 pm in December.
By contrast, daylight in Miami is roughly 6:30 am to 8:15 pm in June, and 7 am to 5:30 pm in December.
This isn’t taking DST into account but does illustrate the problem. Northern parts of the country get 2-3 hours more sunlight at each end of the day in June, and 2-3 hours less in December.
I have 25 years of experience doing exactly that in Arizona.
We’re on STANDARD time.*
We don’t ever change our clocks,
We don’t have annual school bus bloodbaths.
It WORKS.
*Except for a few reservations, particularly the Navajos, whose nation spans both AZ and NM and doesn’t want to spend half the year in a split zone.
Golly gee whiz you mean there’s already real world examples of standard time in operation year round? /S
I am amazed how much insistence there seems to be that it ‘wouldn’t work, wouldn’t be safe’. If a far west high latitude area really believes that traffic safety is gonna be an issue then why don’t just reform their start times for school bus routes and the start of the school day/work day to match the availability of sunlight? I am beginning to wonder if the folks doing all the resisting claiming potential traffic safety and psychological concerns allow folks in their communities to be out after dark and before dawn.
Standard time all year would be better
This is one thing I wish the UK had adopted from Europe. Make our time the same! Absolutely not bothered about it being dark in the morning because its already dark in the morning. What I would prefer is more daylight hours at the arse end of the day, especially in winter.
. On the basis that DST was Ben Franklin’s invention, I vote keep it..
No, it was not.
Franklin had nothing to do with it. Franklin, when he lived in Paris, observed that the upper class, of whom he was one, would go to bed at 3 or 4 AM, and wake up at noon. Thus half of the natural daylight was wasted on them, and they then spent a fortune on candles to stay up most of the night. Of course the working people were getting up with the sun. as they did everywhere. So he jokingly proposed that the City of Paris hire people to go into the streets at sunrise and make such a racket that all the rich people would not be able to sleep and would have to get out of bed. Thus they would go to bed earlier and save a lot of candles. He did not propose messing with the clock, let alone making people wake up before dawn.
Pick one and stick with it would be my preference. If the timing of dawn/dusk in a particular location seems ‘out of step’ to a particular individual residing there they can always choose to pack their crap and move where the relationship between the clock and dawn/dusk feels most comfortable to them. If they instead list off a bunch of reasons/excuses why they don’t want/can’t do so they’ve expressed their revealed (true) preferences and made their true priorities clear.
I’m a night owl. If i was going to de-adjust our clocks from reality then I want anti-DST and not just an hour. 4 hours, 6 minutes, and 53.3333 seconds would be perfect.
Where can I move to that meets those requirements?
Hmm, that’s kinda tough but not impossible so long as you are willing to understand you’re likely to be the only person operating on that particular perspective of time and won’t be able to interact with others except on their terms. Two suggestions.
You’re probably gonna need to permanently charter an aircraft racing ahead of the dawn with your own ‘timepiece’ set to your preferences of the day’s beginning and ending which would be distinct from everyone else while allowing you to fulfill your personal preferences regarding time/daylight.
I suppose purchasing an old missile silo and remaining underground only emerging at your own choice would provide an alternative.
Hope those help.
The cost of the aircraft would be trivial, but traveling East/West changes the effective length of the day which is not the goal
The purpose of DST is to force others to adopt your messed up clock so that doesn’t meet the goal either.
You mean there’s other folks besides you demanding a four hour, six minutes and 53.3333 second differential adjustment to standard time? Are y’all in a cult?
Maybe you should seek out and ask the vampire ruling council for their advice on avoiding sunlight. Wesley Snipes, Blade himself, is outta jail maybe he can point you in the right direction to get you started in your search for more tailored advice for a true night owl. Or you could consent to be a day walker at need pretty much like the rest of us.
School could start later.
My street didnt have streetlights until ten years ago.
And, the kids go to school in the dark no matter what because the school district staggers the schedule to minimize busing costs (high school gets picked up in the dark, then middle often in the dark, then the drivers get a break, then elementary school).
They could make it a permanent shift by 30 min instead of 1 hour and make both sides unhappy.
I drive to work in the dark no matter what.
I remember well the DST disaster of ’74.
I was a loney, teenage broncin’ buck with a pink carnation and pick up truck, but I knew we was all out of proper circadian rhythm the day congress killed the standard time because eNeRgY cOnSeRvAtiOn.
It was supposed to be a year & a half long experiment: Jan. 74 to April 75. People hated it. Congress ended the experiment in Oct. 74.
It was a disaster then; it will be a disaster now, so of course, 535 clowns who couldn’t manage a fart in a bathroom have to go all Santayana, and tee it up again.
I prefer permenant ST over DST, but if nothing else split the difference and declare victory.
Clowns.
This is going to create a widespread depression problem. People are going to leave for work in the dark during the late fall and winter and will be coming home when it’s almost dark at the end of the day. And it will be worse for people who have no window exposure.
Bad idea. It didn’t work in 1973 and it won’t work today. Congress should only listen to people who experienced this in 1973. I did, and both my parents were alarmed sending me out in the dark to cross streets to get to the bus stop.
How did we EVER survive before Daylight Savings Time changes had been implemented?
Welcome to the reality for most of the US military in the late fall/winter. Leave home to reach base long before dawn and drive home after sunset. It’s …well not fine exactly …but you get used to it and figure out coping mechanisms and ways to mitigate it. Nothing says local communities can’t adjust their schedule to match the dawn in their area if they feel safety merits it. If dawn is 8:00 under the change then they could delay bus route pickup to 8:30 and begin school day at 9:30. Its a question of local priorities and willingness to put in the effort to adapt.
Not exactly true, at least according to Gemini. While specific start and end times *might* be under local control, all schools in a state have to meet a required number of instructional days of a given length, or a given number of instructional hours over a school year. This realistically limits their flexibility in setting start and end times because they must accumulate those over a realistic number of calendar days. Then you have to take into account transportation which in areas with widespread busing for integration can be a real headache. I see kids getting on buses in my neighborhood in Louisville (Jefferson County Public) before 7am to make a route that probably doesn’t reach the school until 8 or 8:30am. Now add a similar ride to the end of the school day.
Meh, with a little goodwill a great deal is possible… Including States granting a measure of local control to adjust start/end time. Students would still be in school the same number of instructional hours. Though personally I’d argue for more total days in school regardless with five ‘9 week’ grading periods running near year round. Get the students eligible to graduate HS at 16 to enter the workforce for a bit and practice ‘adulting’ before going off to college and taking out a $100K loan to fund a degree in 17th Century Latina Lesbian Poetry Studies. Heck if less daylight in winter REALLY is a true safety issue for students then move ‘summer break’ to the winter months to take them off the dark bus stops entirely.
Maybe (gasp!) folks will rediscover the forgotten or ignored benefits of local neighborhood schools will point out an obvious solution to school transportation problems of gigantic consolidated schools with an equally gigantic geographic footprint.
There are people that will actually argue that if the kids are going to school in the dark because of this, they should change the school schedule.
Those claims annoy me to no end. It just ain’t that simple. Delaying when school starts has cascading effects on both after school activities and schedules for other non-school programs. I’m pretty sure the only people making this argument don’t have kids actively enrolled in school.
Again, if you want to see what side-effects permanent standard time would have, just study Arizona, where we’ve been doing exactly this FOR 60 YEARS ALREADY.