The Sunshine Protection Act cleared the House on July 14 by a 308-117 vote, and if the Senate and Trump sign off, we stop changing the clocks for good. No more falling back in November. No more springing forward in March. Just one time, forever, which sounds simple until you realize what it actually means for sunrise times in the dead of winter.
The House of Representatives passed legislation to make Daylight Saving Time permanent nationwide (meaning more Daylight in the evening year round)
Locking in Daylight Saving Time year-round means more light at 6pm in January, which everyone loves. But it also means the sun doesn't come up until well past 8am in a lot of the country during peak winter, which is the part nobody wants to talk about. That's exactly the math Chief zeroed in on, comparing an 815am sunrise to living somewhere near the Arctic Circle.
I HATE this. 815am sunrise. Are you INSANE! Might as well live in Alaska.
CaptainCons has been the one guy actually trying to talk everyone off the ledge all week. His take is basically: relax, the sun moving around the clock isn't the apocalypse, it's just a tradeoff. Dark mornings but light evenings in winter, early mornings but late sunsets in summer. He's not wrong that people treat a 1-hour shift like it's ending civilization, but he also admitted there's something to losing that 'sun's not up yet at 8am' depression angle once winter actually hits.
listen as one of the biggest critics around, I don't have a problem with DST and ST. In the fall and winter, yes it gets dark early. Yes, it can be depressing. But there is something amazing about being inside somewhere warm watching football or a Christmas movie while it's dark outside. I think it would be miserable to not see the sun come up until 830a. The adults are all awake by 5a or 6a so you could argue it would be depressing waiting for the sun to wake up. In the spring and summer, we get those late sunsets and fun summer nights that we appreciate so much because of the early dark nights in the winter Pros and cons but overall I think we should leave things as they are because there is nothing wrong with it we tried this once before in the 70s and it was so horrible it got reversed let's stick with what works
This isn't a new fight — Congress tried this exact same bill back in 2022 under the same Sunshine Protection Act name, and it died in the House after passing the Senate unanimously. The sticking point then and now is the same: doctors and sleep scientists generally prefer permanent standard time, not permanent DST, because darker mornings mess with circadian rhythms worse than darker evenings do. That's part of why several senators from both parties have already come out against this version in committee, even with Trump publicly backing it this time around.
Meanwhile the podcast world just wants to keep the bit going. PFT Commenter's stance is that never resetting your car clock again might be better than sex, which is the kind of take that only makes sense if you've spent a decade of Novembers driving around with a dashboard clock that's permanently an hour wrong.
Sure sex is great, but have you ever made it through the entire winter without changing the clock back a hour in your car?
The bill still has to clear the Senate and get a signature before any of this actually changes a single clock, and given the 2022 version's fate, that's very much not a lock. Until then, expect the debate to keep splitting the same way it did this week — half of Barstool dreaming about 9pm sunsets in December, the other half already dreading a pitch-black commute to work.