As I’ve gotten older, I enjoy Daylight Saving Time switches more and more. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also become more of a morning person, and I think morning people benefit from Daylight Saving Time more than night owls. While “Spring Forward” always f–king sucks (pushing our clocks forward one hour every year in March), Fall Back is always awesome. An extra hour in the fall, and pushing the clocks back an hour means that the winter sunrises happen around 7 am. Without “Fall Back,” the sunrise would be an hour later or more. Anyway, Daylight Saving switches have always been controversial and twice a year, every year, there are news stories about whether we should do away with this janky system altogether. In 2022, the Senate even unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, but I always thought that it would probably never get done and it would just be some weird thing that we lived with forever, like the electoral college. Well, Donald Trump is now a believer in getting rid of Daylight Saving Time. How has this become a political issue?
President-elect Donald Trump wants to turn the lights out on daylight saving time. In a post on his social media site Friday, Trump said his party would try to end the practice when he returns to office.
“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” he wrote.
Setting clocks forward one hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall is intended to maximize daylight during summer months, but has long been subject to scrutiny. Daylight saving time was first adopted as a wartime measure in 1942.
Lawmakers have occasionally proposed getting rid of the time change altogether. The most prominent recent attempt, a now-stalled bipartisan bill named the Sunshine Protection Act, had proposed making daylight saving time permanent. The measure was sponsored by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump has tapped to helm the State Department.
“Changing the clock twice a year is outdated and unnecessary,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said as the Senate voted in favor of the measure.
Health experts have said that lawmakers have it backward and that standard time should be made permanent. Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have said that it’s time to do away with time switches and that sticking with standard time aligns better with the sun — and human biology.
Most countries do not observe daylight saving time. For those that do, the date that clocks are changed varies, creating a complicated tapestry of changing time differences.
So Trump wants to eliminate Daylight Saving Time which is technically the “Spring Forward” months in the spring and summer, is that correct? I’ll admit that I’ve gone through this so many times, I’ve confused myself. But after Googling and consulting with CB, I think I’ve got it. When they say “end Daylight Saving Time,” that means right now, the “Fall Back” time is the Standard Time which we would keep all year. Which means that the sun would set in the spring and summer at like 7 pm? I can’t believe I’m saying this but… I would be fine with that. Permanent Fall Back Time (Standard Time) is what we should have. We shouldn’t have to Spring Forward, actually.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
