Trump says GOP will try to eliminate Daylight Savings Time

CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that the Republican Party would try to eliminate daylight saving time, calling it “inconvenient” and “expensive.”

“The Republican Party will do its best to eliminate Daylight Savings Time, which has a small but powerful constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient and very costly to our nation,” Trump wrote about Truth Social.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom the president-elect has tapped to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, have also recently said they support eliminating the semiannual ritual of falling back and springing forward, which would require congressional approval.

While other goals Musk and Ramaswamy have floated for their department have been criticized as unwieldy or impossible, the semiannual clock change is a tradition that has lost its appeal to many voters, polls have shown.

And the amendment, if passed, will have a major impact, affecting how hundreds of millions of people start and end their days. It’s also an idea that some key members of Trump’s incoming administration and the Republican Senate caucus have been vocally supportive of for years.

Most US states change their clocks forward in March and back in November to try to balance the amount of sunlight people receive on any given day. Some proponents of change support a permanent standard time, keeping the clocks as they are from November to March year-round. This would lead to parts of the country experiencing earlier sunrises and sunsets than they normally do during the five months – leaving more light in the mornings and less in the evenings. This approach is supported by medical groups and professionals who say it most closely aligns with the body’s natural circadian rhythm.

Others favor a permanent daylight saving time. The sun would rise and set later, giving people less daylight in the morning and more in the evening. This approach is often supported by retail, business and restaurant groups and organizations that want people to have enough daylight left after work or school to be out and participate in the economy, and by those who say more daylight in the evening can reduce crime.

The reasons for supporting each side of this debate are as varied as each individual’s own personal life experiences; some parents may prefer their children not to wait for the bus on a dark morning, while other parents may prefer to have some daylight while watching their children play sports after school.

Trump has previously expressed support for stopping the clock changes, tweeting in 2019: “Making daylight saving time permanent is OK with me!”

Previous attempts to do so have stalled. Daylight saving time was first introduced during the First World War to help the nation’s industrial productivity during the Great War – not, as popular rumor often suggests, to give farmers more daylight during harvest.

Daylight saving time was kept permanently during most of World War II, also for industrial and energy reasons. During the gas crisis of the 1970s, the country again tried to make daylight savings time permanent, only for public approval to plummet after complaints about children being hit by cars while waiting for the bus at night.

States are not required to change their clocks; Hawaii, most of Arizona, and some U.S. territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean do not observe daylight saving time. In 2022, the US Senate passed legislation making daylight saving time permanent, but the House failed to vote on it. And last year, a bipartisan group of senators reintroduced legislation that would make a switch to daylight saving time permanent. Now, with the possible support of the president-elect, the country can prepare to make another change — one way or another.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Michael Williams contributed to this report.