In July, the House of Representatives voted to end the twice-a-year time change, but the Senate is weighing something different: the Sunshine Protection Act would make daylight saving time permanent. Susan Kohl Malone says that would not create more daylight. It would move an hour of winter morning light into the evening.
That is why the debate has not faded after the House vote. Many people want to stop changing clocks, yet permanent daylight saving time would leave winter mornings darker, not brighter, and that shift would shape how millions start the day. Malone, of the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, says a December sunrise in Boston would slip past 8 a.m., and in parts of the country like Indianapolis it would pass 9 a.m. before daylight arrived.
“Spring ahead, fall back” may soon be a thing of the past, Malone says, but she argues the replacement matters just as much. The Sunshine Protection Act would not add a single minute of daylight; it would simply relabel it. The sun would still rise and set on its own schedule, while the clock would move the hours around. In practical terms, that means more light in the evening and less when people are trying to wake up, drive to work or get children out the door.
Malone says the people most exposed would be early-shift workers and commuters, who would begin their days in darkness and face a greater risk of drowsy driving and workplace injuries. Adolescents would be hauled to school before their brains are ready to learn. An 8:30 a.m. bell would feel like 7:30 by the sun. Later school start times can give teens back the sleep their biology demands, she says, but standard time keeps that gain real.
That is the part of the argument that complicates the push to end the clock changes. Changing time twice a year is harmful, Malone says, but permanent daylight saving time would create a different problem: it would pull winter mornings farther away from the light people need most. Morning light is the master signal that resets the body’s internal clock each day, and moving it later would leave Americans out of sync with the sun.
Malone says the country has already tried this once. In 1974, amid an energy crisis, the United States made daylight saving time permanent, and Congress reversed the experiment by a landslide after a single winter. The question now is not whether the Senate wants to end the ritual of changing clocks. It is whether the Senate will choose a bill that trades that nuisance for darker mornings, and no vote date has been set.
