The United States House of Representatives is scheduled to vote the week of July 14 of this year on a bill to eliminate the biannual time change and establish permanent daylight saving time across the country.
The Sunshine Protection Act, backed by President Donald Trump, has been in Congress for years without becoming law and will now be voted on in the House of Representatives the week of July 14, 2026; if it passes, it must return to the Senate for a new vote.
What is the Sunshine Protection Act
Daylight saving time is the period between March and November when most Americans set their clocks forward one hour to extend daylight into the end of the day. The law proposes that this shift be permanent: clocks would never be set back in the fall.
The Sunshine Protection Act proposes that clocks not be set back in the fall and that daylight saving time remain in effect year-round in the United States (Canva)
We recommend reading:Russia launches the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft with three crew members on board heading to the Space Station
More Read
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the measure in May 2026 by a vote of 48 to 1, as reported by the agency Reuters. The bill has been pushed since 2018 by Representative Vern Buchanan, a Republican from Florida, and has the explicit backing of Trump, who in May called the time change “a ridiculous production that happens twice a year,” according to USA Today.
La propuesta incluye una cláusula de flexibilidad: los estados podrían optar por no adoptarla, según precisó Reuters en su despacho del 9 de julio de 2026 firmado por David Shepardson.
More Read
You might be interested in:This national park requires a passport to enter, even if you are a United States citizen
The history of the debate
The debate is not new. The Senate already approved an identical measure in March 2022 unanimously, but the House never put it to a vote due to resistance from several lawmakers, as reported by NBC. The result was the stalemate that persists to this day.
The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill 48 to 1 in May 2026, with momentum from Vern Buchanan and backing from Donald Trump.
The closest precedent dates back to World War II, when the United States adopted daylight saving time year-round. President Richard Nixon reactivated it in 1974 to reduce energy consumption during the oil crisis, but Congress repealed it that same year due to its unpopularity, according to Reuters.
Arguments in favor
Proponents of the bill argue that the biannual time change has concrete consequences for health and the economy, as detailed by NBC and Reuters:
- It causes sleep disorders in millions of people every time the clocks are changed.
- It increases workplace injuries and traffic accidents in the days following the change.
- Lighter evenings in winter stimulate greater economic activity.
- In states like Florida, more hours of evening daylight directly benefit tourism, golf, and outdoor sports.
Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, told Reuters: “Permanent daylight saving time is better for safety and will give a boost to the tourism industry.”
Trump wrote on the social network Truth Social in April that keeping daylight saving time would be “very popular and, most importantly, no more clock changes, a great inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!“.
ADVERTISING
Arguments against
Opposition to the project has two fronts: the political and the medical.
In the Senate, Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, is the main obstacle. Cotton warned, according to Reuters, that permanent daylight saving time would lead to “absurdly late” sunrises in winter and would force children to go to school in the dark in much of the country.
The Senate had already passed an identical measure on permanent daylight saving time in 2022, but the House did not bring it to a vote and the debate stalled.
From the medical field, the stance points in a different direction, as documented by NBC:
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the National Sleep Foundation do not oppose eliminating the time change, but they prefer permanent standard time, not daylight saving time.
Their argument is that standard time better aligns the natural light cycle with the human biological clock.
Moving the clocks forward permanently, they point out, “is not good for brain health.”
What would happen if it is approved
With permanent daylight saving time, the sun would rise around 9 a.m. in Detroit during the winter, as specified by NBC Miami. If it passes the House, the bill will still have to go through the Senate, where Cotton and other lawmakers have already announced their opposition, according to Reuters.
Several states and territories have already opted not to change their clocks, as detailed by USA Today. Arizona—due to its desert climate—and Hawaii do not observe daylight saving time; the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, does.
The territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands also do not participate.
The experts’ stance
Jay Pea, president of the citizens’ organization Save Standard Time, summarized the limits of the debate with a direct phrase reported by NBC: “There is no law that we can pass to move the sun at our will”.
Medical organizations reinforce that warning. For them, the problem is not just the inconvenience of the biannual change, but which time is chosen as permanent. Their answer is uniform: standard time, not daylight saving time.
