Trump calls for end to daylight saving. Some health professionals agree

Washington: Donald Trump wants to end the century-old practice of daylight saving time, or “springing forward” and “falling back”, as it is known in the US.

“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!” the president-elect wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

Any effort to permanently change the nation’s clocks would require the co-operation of Congress, which has been gridlocked over recent time-change legislation and whether it makes sense to end daylight saving or adopt it year-round instead.

Donald Trump thinks daylight saving is inconvenient. Credit: AP

The practice of shifting clocks forward one hour in March and back in November is intended to maximise Americans’ exposure to sunlight during working hours, but it has long been derided for causing groggy mornings, missed appointments and even some public health problems.

Trump’s announcement aligns him with public health professionals, who have long said daylight saving does not comport with humans’ natural circadian rhythms and the clock changes each spring and autumn are linked to a greater risk of heart attacks, stroke and car accidents. Some countries have banished daylight saving: Brazil’s then-president Jair Bolsonaro abolished it in 2019, while Mexico moved to abolish the practice in 2022. The Mexican president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and his allies cited health issues, educational problems such as student drowsiness and other drawbacks.

But ending daylight saving would put Trump at odds with some of his allies, such as senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who have helped lead a bipartisan effort to adopt the measure year-round. Their argument: extending daylight into winter would give Americans more time to be outside during sunny hours.

A small change makes a big difference for the east coast of Australia every year.Credit: Aresna Villanueva, Stephen Kiprillis

“My Sunshine Protection Act would end this stupid practice of changing our clocks back and forth,” Rubio said in a statement in March, referencing his legislation. Rubio is Trump’s selection to serve as the next secretary of state.

Ending daylight saving would also mean earlier sunrises across the country, where 48 states follow the practice. In Washington, without a one-hour delay, sunrise would begin as early as 4.42am on some days in June if Trump’s plan is successful.

A March 2023 YouGov poll found 62 per cent of Americans want to end the practice, but there was little consensus over what to do next. Half of respondents said they wanted year-round daylight saving, just under a third wanted permanent standard time and the remainder said they were unsure or had no opinion.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom Trump tapped to lead a commission on eliminating government waste, recently mused about ending Americans’ clock changes but have not specified whether they would push for ending it or making it year-round.

The US attempted to end daylight saving 50 years ago, under Richard Nixon, but the decision almost immediately backfired amid widespread reports of children waiting in the dark for school buses to arrive, anecdotes about car accidents and other frustrations. Congress rolled back the change after 10 months.

Lawmakers instead steadily pushed to increase the number of days spent under daylight saving, extending that period in 1985 and again in 2005. Most Americans now live with it for 238 days a year – nearly eight months. (Two states, Hawaii and most of Arizona, have opted out and remain on permanent standard time, which states are allowed to do.)

The battle reached a crescendo in 2022, when the Senate surprisingly passed the Sunshine Protection Act in a unanimous vote. But the bill died in the House amid questions over whether year-round daylight saving was actually safe or healthy, and also galvanised new resistance from medical groups that opposed the idea.

In an interview earlier this year, Tuberville said he was optimistic that Republican leaders of the House would be more favourable to the legislation than the Democrats who led the chamber in 2022. He also said he believed his Senate colleagues would support another bill for permanent daylight saving – and that it would capture popular support.

“I’m doing this for the people,” Tuberville said in an interview earlier this year, adding that he had “got more calls” about addressing clock changes than other policies he had worked on.

Other lawmakers were more sceptical about a legislative compromise.

Frank Pallone jnr of New Jersey – who served as chairman of the House energy and commerce committee in 2022, which reviewed the daylight saving legislation – said he heard from a range of constituents and colleagues who agreed that the clock changes were annoying but disagreed about how to address it. In an interview this month, Pallone said he was curious how Musk and Ramaswamy’s clock-change plan would play out.

“There’s no consensus,” Pallone said. “I wish them luck.”

The Washington Post