President-elect Trump proposed ending daylight saving time. Here’s what that could mean – NBC Chicago

Just over a month after clocks “fell back” to standard time following the end of daylight saving time in much of the United States, President-elect Donald Trump proposed ending the practice of jumping forward and falling back.

IN a post on TruthSocialwrote Trump, “The Republican Party will do its best to eliminate Daylight Savings Time, which has a small but powerful constituency, but should not! Daylight Savings Time is inconvenient and very costly to our nation.”

While Trump’s position appeared to have the approval of advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared to support the opposite position.

The younger Trump’s position is in line with a Senate bill passed in 2022 it would have made summer time permanent from the following year.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions from NBC News clarifying whether Trump is seeking to eliminate daylight saving time or make it permanent.

Here’s what you need to know about daylight saving time and how a switch back to full standard time would affect Illinois and the Chicago area.

What is summer time?

Daylight saving time is a change in the clocks that typically begins in the spring and ends in the fall in what is often referred to as “jump forward” and “fall back”.

Under the terms of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, summer time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

On those days, clocks change either forward or backward one hour.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

Clocks used to spring forward on the first Sunday in April and remained so until the last Sunday in October, but a change was introduced in part to allow children to trick-or-treat in more daylight hours.

In the United States, daylight saving time lasts a total of 34 weeks, running from early to mid-March to early November in states that observe it.

Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of Daylight Savings Time when he wrote in a 1784 essay about saving candles, saying, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” But it was meant more as satire than a serious consideration.

Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916 during World War I as a way to save fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon after.

The United States first introduced daylight saving time on March 19, 1918. It was unpopular and abolished after World War I.

On February 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round daylight saving time, which he called “wartime.” This lasted until 30 September 1945.

Daylight saving time did not become standard in the United States until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which imposed standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that the clocks would go forward one hour at 02.00 on the last Sunday in April and turn back an hour at 02.00 on the last Sunday in October.

States could still exempt themselves from daylight saving time as long as the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round daylight saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 to conserve energy.

When does summer time resume?

In 2025, summer time resumes on March 9, when the clocks jump forward.

Which states observe daylight saving time?

Almost all US states observe daylight saving time, with the exceptions of Arizona (although some Native American tribes observe daylight saving time in their territories) and Hawaii. US territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the US Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.

Which is better for your sleep?

According to Dr. James Rowley, professor of medicine at Rush University and the immediate past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, said changing the clocks could actually do more harm than good.

The subject of daylight saving time vs. standard time has been much debated, especially in recent years. Sleep experts have in some cases advocated a permanent standard time. But some experts say switching to permanent daylight saving time, as some lawmakers have previously proposed, would be worse.

“Permanent standard time would basically mean that we were at what I guess is the biologically correct time of the year. And I would say biologically correct because our bodies are more used to and have evolved to be at what would be considered standard time over the years,” Rowley told NBC Chicago in an interview. “Permanent Daylight Saving Time, the special problems come in during the winter. It’s nice to have the ‘extra hour of sunlight’ in the evening, although I always remind people that we have the same amount of sun, you know, in the summer, regardless of it’s daylight or standard time, but it seems to be an hour later, but in the winter, the sunrise is very problematic, biologically, because we need sunshine in the morning to set our circadian rhythms. “

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has been pushing for a change to permanent standard time for several years.

“By causing the human body clock to be misaligned with the natural environment, daylight savings time increases risks to our physical health, mental well-being and public safety,” Dr. M. Adeel Rishi, who chairs the AASM Public Safety Committee and a pulmonary, sleep medicine and critical care specialist at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis, said in a statement. “Permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety.”

Experts cited a “growing body of evidence” in recent years.

“Permanent standard time helps synchronize the body’s clock with the rising and setting of the sun,” said Dr. James A. Rowley, president of the AASM, in a statement. “This natural synchronization is optimal for healthy sleep, and sleep is essential for health, mood, performance and safety.”

It also echoes similar findings from other organizations, including the National Sleep Foundation, which said “seasonal time changes are disruptive to sleep health and should be eliminated.”

How would it affect the Chicago area?

Since daylight saving time is observed in Illinois from March to November, sunsets will be as late as 20.29 during summer time on June 20, which comes with a sunrise at 5.15, according to timeanddate.com.

If Chicago and the rest of Illinois continued to observe standard time after the switch in early March, both sunrise and sunset times at the peak of summer would be an hour earlier, with a sunrise at 4.15 and a sunset at 19.29.

Keeping to standard time would mean earlier sunsets overall, which would include a 6:03 p.m. sunset on March 20, as opposed to a 7:03 p.m. sunset that Chicago will see on that date next year while observing daylight saving time.