House Passes Bill to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent, but Its Fate in the Senate Remains Unclear

WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, advancing a measure that would eliminate the twice-yearly ritual of changing clocks, though the bill's path forward in the Senate remains uncertain.

The measure, officially named the "Sunshine Protection Act," passed the House on a 308-to-117 vote, drawing support from both Republicans and Democrats. Despite the lopsided House vote, Senate leaders have offered no clear indication of whether the chamber will take up the bill, and at least one Republican senator appears inclined to try to block it from advancing.

Trump Has Championed the Effort

President Trump has been a vocal supporter of eliminating the biannual clock change, describing the practice of adjusting clocks forward each spring and back each fall as a "ridiculous, twice yearly production." In a social media post in May, Trump made clear his preference for permanent daylight saving time over the alternative of permanent standard time.

"We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day," Trump wrote. "And who can be against that."

Florida Republicans Lead the Charge

A significant bloc of Florida Republicans in Congress has driven the legislative push behind the bill. Representative Vern Buchanan of the Tampa Bay area has backed the measure, while Representative Anna Paulina Luna, another Tampa Bay-area Republican, served as a cosponsor.

House leadership agreed to allow this week's vote partly as a means of persuading Luna to lift a legislative blockade she had maintained in an effort to force Senate action on a separate voting restriction bill that Trump has championed, illustrating how the daylight saving time vote became entangled with broader legislative negotiations within the House Republican conference.

Representative Gus Bilirakis, a Florida Republican, argued that the current system of changing clocks twice annually no longer fits how Americans live and work.

"The twice-yearly clock change is a relic of the past that no longer reflects the way Americans live, work and conduct business in the 21st century," Bilirakis said.

A Long History of Clock-Change Debates

Congress has grappled with the question of permanent time changes for decades. The Standard Time Act, first passed in 1918, established federal oversight of the nation's time zones, while the Uniform Time Act of 1966 allowed states to observe daylight saving time from late spring to early fall. The country's clock-changing practices were last significantly altered in 2005, when bipartisan legislation extended the length of daylight saving time by several weeks.

The United States has previously attempted to eliminate the clock switch entirely. In 1974, the country briefly moved to permanent daylight saving time, but reversed course and returned to the twice-yearly change following widespread public discontent with the winter effects of the earlier policy.

More recently, the Senate unanimously passed a version of the bill sponsored by then-Senator Marco Rubio in 2022, but that measure ultimately died in the House without receiving a vote.

Mixed Reactions From Senate Republicans

Senate Republican leadership has offered a cautious, noncommittal response to the House's action. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the chamber's No. 2 Republican, referenced the fate of the earlier Rubio-sponsored bill in remarks to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

"We'll see what happens when it gets here," Barrasso said, referring to the current House-passed bill, while noting that the House had previously "hit the snooze alarm" on the Senate's earlier version.

Barrasso declined to say whether he personally supports the measure, emphasizing that the practical impact of permanent daylight saving time varies significantly depending on geography.

"Depends where you're living in the country and the impact that it would be in your own home state," Barrasso said. "So, it's not as simple as what one state might like."

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has expressed more direct opposition to the concept, citing concerns about the effects of later winter sunrises under a permanent daylight saving time system.

"By moving the clock back an hour in winter, permanent daylight-saving time would push winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of morning sunshine that's essential for our safety and well-being," Cotton said in a floor speech last year.

An Alternative Proposal for Permanent Standard Time

Not all lawmakers agree that permanent daylight saving time represents the right approach. Representatives Mary Gay Scanlon, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican, introduced an alternative bill earlier this month that would instead mandate permanent standard time, the time zone Americans currently observe between November and March.

Scanlon emphasized the physiological importance of morning light exposure in supporting the bill's underlying rationale.

"Morning light is an environmental cue to set our body's internal clocks and promote alertness," Scanlon said. "And dim evening light tells our bodies it's time to sleep."

That view aligns with concerns raised by sleep researchers, who have warned that permanent daylight saving time could ultimately harm rather than help sleep health, despite the grogginess many Americans experience following the twice-yearly clock changes. The Coalition for Permanent Standard Time, an advocacy group, has argued that the winter time zone more closely aligns with the human body's natural circadian rhythm.

A Complicated Patchwork Across States

Under current federal law, most states observe the standard daylight saving time schedule, though several exceptions exist. Hawaii and most of Arizona maintain standard time year-round, as do Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Nineteen states have already passed legislation to adopt permanent daylight saving time, but those laws remain unenforceable because federal law currently does not permit states to observe daylight saving time on a year-round basis. Should the House-passed bill ultimately become law, it would include a provision allowing individual state lawmakers to opt out of permanent daylight saving time in favor of permanent standard time instead, preserving some degree of state-level flexibility even under the new federal framework.

What Comes Next

With the measure now advancing to the Senate, its ultimate fate remains genuinely uncertain, given the mixed reception from Senate Republicans and the competing alternative proposal favoring permanent standard time. Florida's own experience offers a preview of the broader debate: the state's legislature passed similar permanent daylight saving time legislation in 2018, becoming the first state to do so, though that law, like those of the 18 other states that have since followed suit, remains unable to take effect absent the federal changes now under consideration in Washington.