"The Republican Party will make its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t be in place!" Trump wrote. His comments come after widespread debate over the yearly time changes.
Trump’s renewed push has gained support from his allies, including Elon Musk, who tweeted his agreement with the idea after a Twitter poll suggested the public wanted to end daylight saving time. Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead Trump's newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), further promoting efficiency and reform.
Trump first attempted to make daylight saving time permanent in 2019, after several states proposed local measures. In 2022, Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation aimed at making the time change permanent, but the bill failed to pass the House of Representatives. Now, Trump is committed to bringing the issue back to the forefront when he returns to office.
Daylight saving time, originally adopted during World War II as a wartime measure, has long faced criticism for its disruption. The Sunshine Protection Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at ending time changes, stalled despite support from Republicans like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who called the practice "outdated and unnecessary." However, some health experts argue that keeping standard time would better align with human biology, pointing out that permanent daylight saving time may cause disruptions to our natural rhythms.
Meanwhile, states that don’t observe daylight saving time, such as Arizona and Hawaii, avoid these shifts altogether. For those who do observe it, the varying dates for time changes across countries create a complex global scheduling challenge.
The proposal to end daylight saving time also brings implications for religious communities, particularly observant Jews. Halachic requirements for fixed prayer times would be impacted by the shift in daylight hours. In winter months, without daylight saving time, the sunrise would be delayed, making it more difficult for individuals to complete morning prayers before starting their workday. Additionally, the later sunset could push evening prayers (Maariv) to later in the evening, complicating schedules for observant Jews balancing religious and professional obligations.
For families with young children, the absence of daylight saving time could also affect routines, especially during the winter months when children may have to go to school in the dark, raising concerns over safety.
