Letters to the Editor | July 19, 2026

Think about it. It’s 8:30 in the morning, and the sun hasn’t quite come up yet to start the day. Now it’s 6 o’clock in the evening: the sun has set, you’re home from work, the temperature outside is 20 degrees, you don’t live in the Deep South, so really that extra hour of daylight hasn’t given you any benefit or incentive to spend time outdoors on this winter day.

It was a sneaky trick the House pulled by forwarding a permanent daylight saving time measure to the Senate. This experiment was tried once before, and it took less than a year to undo that mistake. It should be about science and human nature, but it is now based on politics and the wants of a few. Let’s hope the Senate is more in tune with the needs of the nation as a whole and rejects a repeat of a bad idea.

J.C. Hoffmeier, Cinnaminson

Sleep scientists continue to lobby for permanent standard time, but their biological arguments are losing the political debate for a simple reason. They ignore the devastating real-world costs of a 4:30 p.m. winter sunset.

Biology does not operate in an economic or social vacuum. While medical groups focus strictly on morning circadian rhythms, lawmakers must govern the entire picture. Permanent standard time creates a kind of sun curfew that carries major mental health, public safety, and economic liabilities. When the sun disappears early, human behavior shifts in predictable ways.

Families retreat indoors to screens, which freezes local retail, dining, and outdoor recreation. Forcing the evening rush hour into darkness reduces visibility and produces a structural spike in pedestrian fatalities and car accidents. Early evening darkness creates predictable public safety concerns. Studies consistently show that brighter evening hours reduce robberies because early evening darkness creates easier conditions for crime.

The remote workforce faces its own burden. Standard time pulls the sunrise drastically early on the East Coast, and companies naturally anchor their schedules to that morning sun. This forces West Coast remote workers into exhausting routines. To match a 7:30 a.m. East Coast start time, a remote worker in Oregon must wake up by 4:30 in the morning. Instead of encouraging flexible communication, our institutions cling to rigid clock uniformity.

The toll of dark afternoons, measured in seasonal depression, higher crime, economic stagnation, and remote worker burnout, is simply too high. A modern and active society needs light.

Christophe Perrenoud, Beaverton, Ore.

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