Trump moves to stop the clocks: America tried that in 1974 and quit in 10 months

New Delhi: The president, Donald Trump, on the Tuesday evening, pressed Republican senators to drop their objections to a bill that would scrap America’s twice-yearly clock change and lock the country on daylight saving time for good. Americans are “sick and tired of having to change their clocks twice a year”, he wrote in a Truth Social post circulated on X by the White House’s official account, @RapidResponse47, calling the ritual foolish, inconvenient and, in places, costly.

He asked Republicans to release their holds so the Sunshine Protection Act can clear the Senate. The House of Representatives passed the bill on July 14, by 308 votes to 117, with 22 Republicans and 95 Democrats against – and it has gone nowhere since.

What the bill would do

H.R. 139, introduced by the representative for Florida, Vern Buchanan, would make daylight saving time the permanent standard time nationwide. States that currently exempt themselves from daylight saving – Hawaii and most of Arizona – would retain the right to opt out.

In plain terms, clocks would spring forward one last time in March and never fall back again.

Who invented daylight saving time

The idea came from George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist who in 1895 asked the Wellington Philosophical Society for a two-hour summer shift so he could hunt insects after work. In 1907, William Willett, a London builder, self-published “The Waste of Daylight”, urging clocks forward by 80 minutes across four Sundays in April.

Willett died in 1915, a year before anyone adopted the idea. War brought it into practice: Germany and Austria-Hungary advanced their clocks on April 30, 1916, to save coal, and Britain followed weeks later.

Why America follows it

The United States joined on March 19, 1918, through the Standard Time Act, which created the time zones and daylight saving together. The Library of Congress records that the aim was conserving electricity, not helping farmers; the farm lobby opposed it and won repeal in 1919, overriding a veto from the president, Woodrow Wilson.

The president, Franklin Roosevelt, reimposed year-round “War Time” from February 9, 1942, to September 30, 1945. Two decades of confusion followed.

With no federal rule in place, a 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, crossed seven time changes, and St Paul once began daylight saving weeks before neighbouring Minneapolis. The president, Lyndon Johnson, signed the Uniform Time Act on April 13, 1966, fixing national dates while letting states opt out entirely.

Only Hawaii and most of Arizona did. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 stretched the period to its present eight months.

Energy was always the justification, and the evidence is thin. A 2008 US Department of Energy report to Congress found the four added weeks cut national electricity use by roughly 0.5 per cent a day.

The economists Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant, studying Indiana’s 2006 statewide switch, found residential demand instead rose about 1 per cent, costing households some $9 million a year. The two studies measure different things – four extra weeks against the whole policy – so they are not directly comparable.

What would actually change

Winter mornings would shift later. A Nexstar analysis found Grand Rapids would get 55 sunrises after 9am, the latest at 9.14am; Indianapolis and Louisville would see sunrises after 8am for more than 140 winter days.

Nashville’s latest would be 7.58am. Winter sunsets across much of the country would move past 5pm.

What happened in 1974

America has run this experiment before. An emergency energy law signed by the president, Richard Nixon, took effect on January 6, 1974.

Support fell from about 79 per cent in December 1973 to 42 per cent by February 1974, according to NORC, and the president, Gerald Ford, signed the repeal on October 5, 1974. Claims that dark mornings were killing children – eight deaths in Florida were widely cited – were contested: the National Safety Council reported no notable rise in early-morning pupil fatalities.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s 2023 statement, endorsed by 20 organizations, backs permanent standard time as the better match for the human body clock.

Where it stands

Polling depends heavily on the question asked. AP-NORC, in October 2025, found 56 per cent choosing permanent daylight saving over 42 per cent for standard time in a forced choice, with only 12 per cent favouring today’s switching.

Gallup, in January 2025, offering three options, found 48 per cent for permanent standard time and 24 per cent for permanent daylight saving.

The Senate is the obstacle. The senator for Arkansas, Tom Cotton, has argued the change would push winter sunrises to “an absurdly late hour”. The senator for South Dakota, Mike Rounds, told reporters it “doesn’t work in South Dakota”.

The senate majority leader, John Thune, has said his concern is “optionality for states”.

Nineteen states have already legislated for permanent daylight saving, pending federal permission. Europe is stuck too: the European Parliament voted 410-192 in March 2019 to end seasonal changes by 2021, and the Council of the EU has still not agreed a position.

India has never observed the practice at all.