Ending Daylight Savings Time

December 28, 2024 by James Stansbury

Trump’s proposals are coming fast and furious. His newest two include a threat to take back control of the Panama Canal and a renewed interest in buying Greenland although these two may be negotiating tactics. However, his earlier proposal surprised me more. The Hill reported that Trump said “Republicans would push to eliminate daylight saving time [DST], calling it “inconvenient” and “costly.”

Although Trump’s desire to end DST and make standard time year-round will please many people, any change will be controversial. There are only three options and each has supporters: (1) Do nothing. (2) Make DST year-round. (3) Make Standard Time year-round. Following are some thoughts on each:

(1). The case for doing nothing:

Keeping the status quo is the least controversial since it seems to be a good compromise and has been in effect for nearly 60 years. Although most people will complain about changing the clocks twice a year, many of the same complainers still appreciate the extra hour of evening daylight during the warm months and the four months of standard time in winter that prevents an added hour of morning darkness if DST was year-round.

Since 1966, with only one brief exception in 1974, the country has been under the current system once Congress passed the Uniform Time Act making DST standard except during the four months of shortest daylight hours from November through February. And this act allows states to exempt themselves from observing DST if they want. To date, only Arizona and Hawaii have done so and this suggests most states support the status quo.

(2). The case for making DST year-round:

Many have forgotten or never knew that in 2022 the Senate voted unanimously to make year-round DST permanent. Ironically, this bipartisan Senate bill was co-sponsored by none other than Trump’s Chief of Staff nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio (D-Fla). Thankfully it failed in the House. The reason I say ‘thankfully’ was summarized in an article in the New York Post at that time:

“During a national energy crisis in 1974, the federal government initiated nationwide permanent DST for two years. But winter DST rapidly lost favor. People disliked going to work on very dark winter mornings. They especially detested sending children to school on very dark mornings, walking dark streets or waiting for buses on dark roads.”

Congress listened to the people for a change and quickly stopped the 1974 experiment and should have permanently killed this idea, yet in 2022 our virtue-signaling U.S. senators voted unanimously to repeat the mistake.

(3). The case for year-round standard time:

Prior to 1883, there was no uniform method of setting clocks. Localities nationwide determined the time based on whenever their local sundial hit high noon. This obviously caused much confusion for the growing and increasingly powerful railroads in both the U.S. and Canada. It was they who successfully lobbied to establish standardized time zones in 1883.

The resulting use of standard time continued from about 1883 through 1966 when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act (UTA) in 1966 (see Para. 1). The only exceptions were two brief uses of year-round DST during WWI and WWII, but these experiments were so unpopular they didn’t last for long.

I was in college in 1966 when DST first went into effect, but was being inducted into the military for an all-expenses-paid, life-changing adventure in Vietnam so I was a little distracted. However, I still recall that the extra hour of evening daylight meant drive-in theaters couldn’t start those awful “B” movies early enough to get our dates back home prior to their 11 PM curfew.

A more scholarly case for returning to year-round standard time was made by Jeffery Tucker in the Epoch Times. He wrote that “[e]very study shows that this disruption is terrible for health, disrupting sleep patterns, and contributing to mental fatigue and even depression. It is associated with increased hospital admissions and even car crashes. This should not shock us. Our bodies are regulated by patterns of the sun, more so than we know.” The health benefits Jeffery cited should help justify its restoration although it’s still no hill to die on.

The incentive for doing nothing is conflict avoidance and year-round DST is ruled out. However, with Trump in office this may be the last opportunity to reinstate year-round standard time, and if done early enough we can skip the lost hour of sleep that arrives this spring. But even if implemented, don’t let nostalgia for those old drive-in theaters get your hopes up they will ever return.