As Americans pushed their clocks forward an hour on Sunday to implement daylight savings, Senator James Lankford doubled down on his commitment to eliminating seasonal time changes, saying he wanted to abandon what he described as an antiquated first world war convention.
The Republican lawmaker from Oklahoma said he was devoted to proverbially locking the clock through his Sunshine Protection Act, which unanimously passed in the Senate but was not taken up by the House. Speaking with CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper on Sunday, Lankford said he wanted to “start the dialogue” back up partly because of an encounter with a military veteran who seemed to view ending daylight savings time as a dying wish.
“As funny as this sounds, several years ago, I was walking in a Veterans Day parade, and a veteran … that was watching the parade, an older gentleman, gets up from his lawn chair – he actually walks into the parade route, shook my hand and said: ‘Before I die, would you end daylight savings time?’” Lankford recounted.
“Of all the things I thought you would say to me today, that is not what I thought you would say,” Lankford recalled telling the veteran. “He said: ‘I hate it. I’m in my 80s. I want you to get rid of daylight savings time before I die.’”
The politician said he assured the veteran he had a bill with fellow Republican US senator Marco Rubio to eliminate a time change that he said was “a relic” of the first world war, when the government wanted to add daylight hours to conserve energy. Lankford’s bill would eliminate the time change by making daylight savings time apply year-round in the US.
“We want to be able to lock this clock,” Lankford said to Tapper. “A lot of people are annoyed by it … Let’s actually flick our lights on, and we can do this.”
Lankford alluded to how Arizona had chosen to stop moving its clocks up an hour in the spring and then back an hour in the fall. “They have done this for years, and, somehow, their kids are still getting to school on time, commerce is still happening,” Lankford said. “And today, in Arizona, they’re not – they’re not waking up with a clock that’s messed up.”
Lankford’s comments come amid renewed discussion of daylight savings time and health. The American Heart Association recently said that there was a “marked increase” in strokes and heart attacks in the days after clocks are set one hour ahead of standard time.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has also called for abolishing seasonal time changes due to its impact on circadian rhythms. “Mounting evidence shows the dangers of seasonal time changes, which have been linked to increased medical errors, motor vehicle accidents, increased hospital admissions and other problems,” the academy’s president, Jennifer Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist, said in a statement.
Lankford’s criticism of the time change came as he faced scrutiny from his own party over his efforts to secure passage of a failed bipartisan border security agreement. The Oklahoma county’s Republican party censured him on Saturday, the Oklahoman reported.
The proposed measure would have meant the hiring of 1,500 more border security officers and agents, along with 100 more immigration judges as well as 4,300 more asylum officers to address a backlog of about 2m cases, the newspaper explained.
When Joe Biden mentioned the proposed legislation during the State of the Union address on Thursday, Republicans booed. But Lankford appeared to mouth “that’s true” as the US president recounted what the bill would have accomplished.
• This article was amended on 12 March 2024 to include a line clarifying that James Lankford’s aim is to end the shift between standard time and daylight saving time by adopting the latter year-round.
