The U.S. House voted 308-117 on July 14 to make daylight saving time permanent and sent H.R. 139 to the U.S. Senate. If it becomes law, the country would stop falling back each November and stay on daylight saving time year-round.
The vote lands just as the next clock change is getting close. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November, and in 2026 that falls on Nov. 1. For readers in Ohio, the practical effect is easy to see: the state would get the same amount of daylight either way, but more of it would be pushed into the evening and less into the morning.
That means winter mornings would start later. Sunrises in Columbus, Cincinnati and Akron would move closer to 8 or 9 a.m. in November and December under permanent daylight saving time. December sunsets in central Ohio already come as early as 5:07 p.m. after the clocks fall back, according to the United States Naval Observatory, and a year-round daylight saving system would shift that light later instead of creating any new daylight.
That is the part of the proposal that often gets lost. Permanent daylight saving time would not give Ohio more daylight overall. It would only move an hour of morning light into the evening. Summers would look much the same as they do now, because daylight saving time is already used from March to November. The real change would be felt in the dark months, when school buses, commuters and early risers would meet sunrise much later in the day.
The bill also leaves an important choice on the table for states that do not observe daylight saving time, including Arizona and Hawaii. They could adopt the new system or keep their current standard time. States can decide whether to observe daylight saving time, but they cannot change time zones, and Ohio would remain on eastern time whether or not it chose to follow the new system. The U.S. Department of Transportation oversees time zones in the United States.
H.R. 139 now moves to the U.S. Senate for further consideration, where the question is no longer whether the clocks would change twice a year in theory, but whether enough lawmakers want to lock the nation into one side of the clock all year. For Ohio, the answer would be clear on winter mornings: the sun would still rise on schedule, but it would do so later.
