The US House of Representatives voted on Tuesday in Washington to approve the Sunshine Protection Act, a proposal to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, but the measure now faces a far more complicated test in the Senate and at the White House. Backed strongly by Donald Trump and a bloc of Florida Republicans, the bill would end the ritual of changing clocks twice a year and lock the country into daylight saving time all year round.
The House vote 308 in favour and 117 against is only the latest twist in a century-long argument over how Americans measure their days. Congress first standardised time zones in 1918, then laid out the modern system in the Uniform Time Act of 1966, allowing clocks to 'spring forward' in late spring and 'fall back' in early autumn. That framework was last tweaked in 2005, when a bipartisan law lengthened the daylight-saving period by several weeks.
