Congress is once again pushing to end the twice-yearly clock changes, a fight that has resurfaced repeatedly for decades and failed every time it reached the finish line.
The House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act on July 14 in a bipartisan 308-117 vote, sending the measure to the Senate. The bill would make daylight saving time the permanent, year-round standard, while allowing individual states to opt out. The bill was sponsored with bipartisan support and now heads to the Senate for debate.
Trump has backed the bill
President Trump has publicly pushed Congress to pass the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., writing on social media in May that he intended to work to see the Sunshine Protection Act signed into law.
Senate outlook remains uncertain
Despite the lopsided House vote, the bill’s path through the Senate is unclear. A senior Hill aide said Sen. Tom Cotton has the same concerns he’s had about the proposal in the past, and that senators on both sides of the aisle have opposed the Senate version of the bill in committee, with Cotton expected to ask Senate Majority Leader John Thune not to bring it up for a vote. Thune himself has expressed reservations, telling NBC News he doesn’t want a mandate, noting that a similar approach “was tried once before and repealed,” while adding that the Senate is still looking at the issue.
The country has been here before
The current push echoes a nearly identical effort in 1973, when Congress made daylight saving time permanent nationwide in response to an energy crisis. The idea was that more evening sunlight would reduce the nation’s energy consumption. It didn’t work, and the change became very unpopular very quickly, according to David Prerau, a leading expert on the subject. Americans disliked sending children to school in the dark for months more than they disliked changing their clocks, and Congress repealed the law in 1974, before the two-year trial period was even finished.
The experiment ran from 1974 to 1975 under President Nixon, who signed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act following the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but the measure was quickly repealed after it proved deeply unpopular, forcing commuters and schoolchildren into pitch-black winter mornings and contributing to traffic accidents and other incidents tied to the lack of daylight. In parts of the country, the sun did not rise until after 9 a.m. during that period.l
What supporters and critics argue today
The American Medical Association, which supports making standard time permanent rather than daylight saving time, has said the spring clock change is associated with public health and safety risks, including increased risk of heart problems, mood disorders and car crashes. Supporters of permanent daylight saving time counter that more evening daylight could benefit public safety, economic activity and family time after work and school, while critics warn that darker winter mornings could pose safety risks for children and commuters, similar to the backlash in the 1970s.
A separate federal review by the U.S. Department of Transportation found no clear evidence linking traffic accidents to year-round daylight saving time and determined that energy savings from the practice were minimal, ranging from 0.4% to 1.5%.
Religious groups have also raised objections. Orthodox Jewish organizations oppose permanent daylight saving time for two reasons, according to Rabbi A.D. Motzen of Agudath Israel of America: safety risks to schoolchildren and conflicts with religious practice, since Jewish law requires morning prayers to occur close to sunrise, which would be delayed under the change. Motzen said that given the length of morning prayer services combined with typical commute times, it would be extraordinarily difficult for observant Jews to arrive at work on time, and synagogues in affected areas could struggle to gather enough people for daily services.
What happens next
The bill’s fate now rests with the Senate, where a similar version passed unanimously in 2022 but never received a House vote before the session ended. This year, the House vote has changed the political dynamic, but Senate leadership has not committed to a floor vote, and it remains unclear whether the chamber will act before Congress recesses in August.
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