House Republicans are bringing back a bill that would end the United States’ twice-yearly changing of the clock and make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. The move could put the issue back on the House floor as lawmakers fold language from the Sunshine Protection Act into a larger transportation funding package, according to a report in The Washington Post.
If it advances, the bill would settle one of the few routines that still reliably jolts the country twice a year, though not everyone would be asked to live by the same rule. Some states would still be allowed to opt out and stay on year-round standard time, while states such as Arizona and Hawaii already use that system.
The push lands at a moment when public frustration with clock changes is broad, even if the preferred fix is not. A YouGov survey in March found that 64% of U.S. adults want to stop changing clocks. But that same poll found the country split on how to do it: 43% favored permanent daylight saving time and 28% preferred standard time.
That divide has helped explain why the idea keeps coming back without ever settling the matter. A previous version of the Sunshine Protection Act passed the Senate in a surprise vote in 2022, only to stall in the House over concerns about winter mornings. Republicans now want to attach the language to a transportation bill, a route that could give the measure a better shot than a stand-alone push.
Donald Trump has already treated the issue as both popular and politically awkward. In March, he called ending the clock change “very popular” and said it would mean “no more changing of the clocks,” which he described as a big inconvenience and costly for government. But he also called it “a 50/50 issue,” saying it was hard to get excited about something so evenly divided, and later said that when an issue is that close, he usually wonders what else needs attention.
The United States still changes clocks twice a year because Congress has never settled on a permanent national system. States can already choose year-round standard time on their own, but permanent daylight saving time would require an act of Congress. Nineteen states have already passed bills calling for an end to the practice of changing clocks, and more than a dozen others have introduced or are considering similar measures.
That leaves House Republicans trying again on a question that is popular in the abstract and split in practice. The next test is whether the new language survives the broader transportation package and reaches the House floor without getting stuck, as it did before, on the simple fact that the country does not agree on which clock it wants to keep.
