Will Trump Put An End To Daylight Saving Time? What To Know

Daylight saving time is scheduled to begin in just under a month, on Sunday, March 9. But when it comes down to it, will Americans “spring forward” and set their clocks ahead an hour, then “fall back” an hour next November?

President Donald Trump, whose administration has been working at a dizzying pace to reshape the federal government, has indicated support in the past for ending daylight saving time.

“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!” Trump said a December 2024 post on his Truth Social platform. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

Trump’s post reignites a debate that has been dormant since the Senate, with rare unanimity in early 2022, passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would have made daylight saving time the permanent time. The measure was introduced by then-Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who was recently confirmed as Trump’s secretary of state.

The legislation died in a House committee after some members argued for year-round standard time, citing both the advice of medical and sleep experts and the sentiments of their constituents — especially farmers who, despite a common myth, vehemently opposed daylight saving time when it was first implemented more than a century ago, according to the Library of Congress.

Daylight saving time pushes sunshine an hour later in the evening. It was enacted in 1918 during World War I to conserve energy by aligning daylight hours with the times when people were most active. DST was widely unpopular and Congress abolished the measure a year later.

DST was established again in 1942 during World War II. The year-round “war time” lasted until Sept. 30, 1945. States and cities, especially those east of the Mississippi River, began adopting DST in the years after, and it wasn’t until 1966 that dates for the beginning and end of daylight saving time were standardized. The law allowed for some exemptions, which are in effect today in Arizona and Hawaii.

Musk On ‘Annoying Time Changes’

Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk and his former DOGE partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, said last year in a series of social media posts that the practice of alternating between standard and daylight time should be eliminated, CNN reported.

Musk said the “annoying time changes” should be abolished, while Ramaswamy declared the practice “inefficient” and said it was “easy to change.” Ramaswamy has since left DOGE.

Trump’s December 2024 post on Truth Social seemed to suggest he favors year-round standard time, though in the past, he has supported making daylight saving time permanent. In 2019 during his first term in office, Trump said on social media that “making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me.”

It’s unclear if Trump and Republicans intend to prioritize the adoption of a year-round permanent time. Ending the clock changes requires action by Congress.

Americans Tire Of Clock Ritual

Polls over the years have shown a majority of Americans are weary of fiddling with their clocks twice a year. Where they disagree is whether the permanent time should be standard or daylight saving.

A YouGov survey taken in March 2023 showed 62 percent of Americans favored eliminating the biannual clock adjustments. That’s consistent with the results of a Monmouth University poll in 2022 that found 61 percent of Americans want to stop changing their clocks.

In 2019, an Associated Press-NORC poll found 71 percent of Americans want to end the practice, and only 28 percent wanted to continue it. Among the rest of Americans, 40 percent favored year-round standard time and 31 percent wanted year-round daylight saving time.

An informal, nonscientific survey of Patch readers last fall mirrored the findings of those and other polls on whether to keep or ditch daylight saving time.

“Whatever is chosen, just keep it the same. Stop changing the clocks!” a reader from Virginia told Patch. “I literally have to take off the Monday and Tuesday after the spring forward, or my work suffers for a week. It takes me that long to adjust.”

• Related: Is It Time To Ditch Twice-A-Year Clock Changes? [Patch Survey]

4:30 Morning Wake-Up Call

Those advocating for year-round daylight saving time cite mainly economic reasons. They argue that when school and work are over for the day, DST gives people an extra hour of daylight to frequent local businesses, restaurants, and participate in more outdoor community activities and opportunities. Others cite research that suggests permanent daylight saving time reduces crime.

Medical experts say daylight saving time disrupts the human body’s natural circadian rhythms. Increases in the risk of heart attacks and strokes, mood disturbances and traffic crashes due to decreased alertness are also associated with the time switch. Parents say it throws off their kids’ bedtimes.

In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine said it believed the Unitedd States should “eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of a national, fixed, year-round time.”

Year-round DST would mean that, in early January, the sun wouldn’t rise until well after 8 a.m. in many parts of the country, particularly in the northern U.S. And year-round standard time would push sunrises to as early as 4:30 a.m. in some areas.

States Ready To Make Changes

Nearly every U.S. state has considered multiple time zone bills since 2015, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 2018, Florida became the first state in the country to enact legislation making daylight saving time the permanent time, pending a change in federal law that would allow it. Since then, another 20 states have enacted legislation or passed resolutions to provide for year-round daylight saving time if Congress allowed it.

Those states are Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Legislation has been filed this year in a handful of states — Utah, Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas — seeking the same exemptions Hawaii and Arizona received. Hawaii’s exemption is due to its tropical latitude, which means there’s little variation in the hours of daylight in winter and summer. In hot and sunny Arizona, the additional hour of sunshine at the end of the day defeated the energy savings goals of daylight saving time.

If nothing happens at the federal level and DST takes effect as scheduled on Sunday, March 9, it will end on Sunday, Nov. 2 — again assuming nothing happens in Washington to stop it.

Daylight saving time is observed in about 70 countries, including Canada and parts of Latin America, the Caribbean. Known in Europe as “summer time,” it runs from the last Sunday in March until the last Sunday in October, this year from March 30-Oct. 26.