Trump vows to ‘work very hard’ to enact permanent daylight saving time

President Donald Trump on Thursday evening 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.

“It’s time that people can stop worrying about the ‘Clock,’ not to mention all of the work and money that is spent on this ridiculous, twice yearly production,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier Thursday passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the practice of “springing forward” and “falling back” by permanently advancing the nation’s clocks by one hour. States would be able to opt out of the change.

The legislation now heads to the House floor, where its prospects are unclear. Past efforts to enact year-round daylight saving time have been stymied by lawmakers and voters’ strong, often opposing views on the issue.

Trump has repeatedly called for the change across his political career — but the responsibility of changing the nation’s time code rests with Congress, meaning that a president cannot issue an executive order.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that House Republicans would resurrect the Sunshine Protection Act this week and attach it to transportation legislation after years of not passing it out of committee.

States are required to observe daylight saving time, “springing forward” in March and “falling back” in November, although Hawaii and part of Arizona have opted out and follow year-round standard time.

Nineteen states have also approved measures that would allow them to adopt year-round daylight saving time if Congress passed a bill making it permanent nationwide, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Several GOP lawmakers cheered the bill, including congressmen from Florida who said their constituents wanted the change. Politicians from the coasts have generally pushed for year-round daylight saving time, given that their time zones would allow them to enjoy longer, sunnier days.

“It’s been long discussed, and it’s about time we get it through,” said Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Florida).

Lawmakers from the Midwest have said that year-round daylight saving time would unfairly leave their constituents with later, darker mornings in the middle of winter.

The legislation faces an uncertain path on the House floor as well as in the Senate, where fights over changing the nation’s time code often break down by geography, not party lines.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), a staunch Trump ally, last year took public credit for having stifled a previous plan to enact the Sunshine Protection Act and pledged to “always oppose any effort to adopt daylight savings time year-round.”

Lawmakers who have considered changes to daylight saving time in recent years said they were stymied by the surprisingly difficult politics of the issue: Most Americans do want to end the nation’s clock changes — but cannot agree on what should replace them.

Just 12 percent of Americans favor the current system, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in October. But 47 percent oppose it, and the remainder said they were neither opposed or in favor.

But there’s little consensus on what to adopt instead. Fifty-six percent of Americans say they would prefer year-round daylight saving time, with more light in the evening and less in the morning, while 42 percent want year-round standard time, with more light in the morning and less at night, the AP-NORC poll found.

Democrats on Thursday noted that Congress enacted a law for year-round daylight saving time in the 1970s, but the public panned the measure and lawmakers swiftly reversed it.

“In Florida alone, eight children were killed in traffic accidents in the weeks after the change — that’s not auto safety,” Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-California) said in Thursday’s markup. “Communities pushed back. Congress reversed course. We should learn from that history instead of repeating it.”

Some medical groups and public health experts have warned that year-round daylight saving time would be unhealthy, citing risks such as higher rates of obesity or metabolic dysfunction, and argued that year-round standard time is the healthier option.

Beth Ann Malow, a neurologist and sleep medicine researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has long argued in favor of permanent standard time, including at a congressional hearing in 2022.

The “healthy choice is standard time or at least to keep status quo,” Malow wrote in a text message.