For years now, Congress has been slowly moving towards ending Daylight Saving Time. The move has bipartisan support, and they called it the Sunshine Protection Act. The Senate passed a version of the SPA during the Biden administration, and the bill has been plodding through the House for months. Well, on Tuesday, the House finally voted on ending the time changes and it passed! Now it will go back to the Senate. Apparently, there’s some skepticism about whether it will pass? I think I know why there’s skepticism – this bill would ensure that we stay at “spring forward” time and never “fall back.” Meaning, in winter, the sunrise wouldn’t happen until like 9 am.
The House on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to make daylight saving time permanent, but the measure to spare Americans the semiannual clock-changing that shortens winter days faces an uncertain path to enactment.
The measure, fittingly named the “Sunshine Protection Act,” passed on a 308-to-117 vote. Its fate is murky in the Senate, where one G.O.P. leader said it was unclear whether it could move ahead and at least one Republican appears inclined to try to block it.
President Trump has championed the effort to save an extra hour of daylight before nightfall and make the time zone permanent, describing the ritual of moving clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall a “ridiculous, twice yearly production.”
“We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post in May. “And who can be against that.”
A sizable bloc of Florida Republicans in Congress is leading the charge on legislation that would do just that, mandating daylight saving time nationwide for the entire year. Representative Vern Buchanan of the Tampa Bay area is backing the bill, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, another Tampa Bay-area Republican, cosponsored it.
House leaders agreed to allow a vote on the measure this week as a sweetener for Ms. Luna in their efforts to persuade her to lift a legislative blockade she had maintained as she sought to force Senate action on a voting restriction bill Mr. Trump has championed.
My controversial opinion is that we shouldn’t let night owls (like Trump) dictate Daylight Saving Time policy to the nation. All of us early-risers need some morning sun and it’s insane that they would simply mandate keeping “spring forward” and not “fall back.” Fall Back is far superior. Fall Back ensures that people aren’t driving to work in pitch black mornings at 8:30 am. Fall Back ensures that children aren’t waiting for school buses in pitch black as well. Yes, the night owls will have to deal with earlier sunsets, but they’re night owls! They’re going to be up regardless of whether there’s still daylight at 8 pm!
9:00 AM Sunrise is more insane than most people realize. That’s 1.5 class periods into school before the sun even rises. 2 hours into most blue collar workdays. That extra hour of daylight (in cold winter when everyone is inside anyway) from 5-6p isn’t worth it at all. https://t.co/826dZOpp5W
— Mark Allan Bovair (@markallanbovair) July 14, 2026
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
