President-elect Donald Trump wants to turn back the clock on Daylight Saving Time.
The president-elect has promised many rollbacks of the administrative state and laws in his second term. Still, it came as a shock on Friday when he said his administration would try to stop future springs forward and falls back.
“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 in a post to Truth Social. Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient and very costly to our Nation.”
Scrapping the practice of adjusting the clock with the seasons has garnered bipartisan support in the past. A 2022 attempt passed the Senate by unanimous consent, though the House never took it up. That bill would have kept the nation on Daylight Saving Time, though, not permanent Standard Time, as Trump’s post suggested.
Though broad consensus exists amongst Americans for axing the change itself – a 2022 CBS poll found only 21% support the switch – experts say Standard Time, not Daylight, is ideal for the human body.
"Permanent Standard Time is better for human health," Dr. Anita Shelgikar, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School, told Salon last year. "And the reason for that is because Standard Time best aligns our internal clock with the world around us, and so the closer those two things can be aligned, the better for many, many health outcomes."
Whether Trump can get it done within the 48 days he’ll have in office before Daylight Saving Time returns on March 9 remains to be seen. The direction of the change could be up for debate, too.
The bipartisan coalition that pushed the 2022 “Sunshine Protection Act” may or may not be willing to sway.
Some close to the president-elect take issue with permanent Standard Time, however. Donald Trump Jr. argued the nation should “leave it daylight savings time always” in a November post to X.
