Most of the U.S. will fall back one hour at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November, ending daylight saving time for 2026 and giving millions of Americans an extra hour of sleep this weekend.
For people watching the clock, the change is not abstract. In Boston, sunrise will move from 7:16 a.m. on Saturday to 6:17 a.m. on Sunday, while sunset shifts from 5:39 p.m. to 4:37 p.m., a quick reminder that the same hour can make the morning brighter and the evening darker.
Daylight saving time runs from March to early November, when most of the U.S. stays one hour ahead of standard time. Congress first adopted it in 1918 during World War I, later repealed the switch after the war but let states keep it if they wanted, then brought it back during World War II and again during the 1970s energy crisis. It did not set a uniform start and end date until 1966.
The fight over whether the country should stop changing clocks is back in Congress. The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House in July and went to the Senate, and President Trump supports it. He has blamed Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton for holding it up, even posting what he said was Cotton's cellphone number and urging people to call. Cotton has argued that Congress has tried permanent daylight saving time before and abandoned it after Americans lived through absurdly late winter sunrises.
That is the friction inside the debate: permanent daylight saving time would keep the evening light, but it would also push winter mornings later, especially in the northern U.S., where sunrise would not wait for the school bell. The law on the table would also let states opt out of daylight saving time altogether before it takes effect, which means the broader answer is still not settled even if one bill moves ahead.
The clock change itself is not what will decide the larger fight. The Senate must act before early January, when the current batch of bills expires and a new class of lawmakers takes over after Tuesday's midterm elections. If the Sunshine Protection Act dies there, the effort does not pick up where it left off. It starts over, and both the House and the Senate would have to approve it again before it could reach the president.
