Senator Blocks Trump-Backed Effort To Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent (politico.com)
- Reference: 0179902226
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/10/29/0321225/senator-blocks-trump-backed-effort-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent
- Source link: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/28/congress/cotton-blocks-bill-to-stop-changing-clocks-00626466
> Sen. Tom Cotton wasn't fast enough in 2022 to block Senate passage of legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent. Three years later, he wasn't about to repeat that same mistake. The Arkansas Republican was on hand Tuesday afternoon to [1]thwart a bipartisan effort on the chamber floor to pass a bill that would put an end to changing the clocks twice a year, including this coming Sunday. [...] A cross-party coalition of lawmakers has been trying for years to make daylight saving time the default, which would result in more daylight in the evening hours with less in the morning, plus bring to a halt to biannual clock adjustments.
>
> President Donald Trump endorsed the concept this spring, calling the changing of the clocks "a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!" His comments coincided with a hearing, then a markup, of Scott's legislation in the Senate Commerce Committee. It set off an intense lobbying battle in turn, pitting the golf and retail industries -- which are [2]advocating for permanent daylight saving time -- against the [3]likes of sleep doctors and Christian radio broadcasters -- who [4]prefer standard time .
"If permanent Daylight Savings Time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," said Cotton in his objection to a request by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to advance the bill by unanimous consent. "For many Arkansans, permanent daylight savings time would mean the sun wouldn't rise until after 8:00 or even 8:30am during the dead of winter," Cotton continued. "The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children and working Americans."
[1] https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/28/congress/cotton-blocks-bill-to-stop-changing-clocks-00626466
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/29/1934243/daylight-savings-time-is-so-bad-its-messing-with-our-view-of-the-cosmos
[3] https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/16/2317241/permanent-standard-time-could-cut-strokes-obesity-among-americans
[4] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/03/0653235/whats-worse-than-setting-clocks-back-an-hour-permanent-daylight-savings-time
not federal, make it a state choice (Score:2)
Just let it be a state choice. Feds need to get out. Each state can pick whatever messed-up time they want.
Re: (Score:2)
They do. Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii are the two U.S. states that do not observe daylight saving time. Additionally, several U.S. territories do not observe it, including American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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States can choose to observe DST or not, but they can't choose to stay on DST permanently (at least not right now).
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They can't. The states can choose to stay on standard time, however they cannot choose to stay on DST year round due to how the law is written.
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How about Indianna? You know, the one that you almost click on when trying to set the EST time zone.
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That would make business travel confusing. Some will be using analog clocks or clocks without software updates and enough will be late to be a problem.
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Great... that's just what the sysadmins in this forum need. Another 49 time zones to choose from in our operating system and application configuration screens.
Re: not federal, make it a state choice (Score:1)
Time is indeed a local thing - as local as it could get. Any state or even village is free to ignore the Federal rule. No amount of legislation can change a sundial in Tombstone Arizona.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what this bill would do!
Well within reason. They can choose between permanent DST or no DST.
They're being dishonest assholes by omitting to mention that the new law would still allow them to just opt out of it and lock into normal time year round.
I want to keep the status quo (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, time for the twice-yearly bitchfest about DST.
Business schedules need to change with the season. Everybody moving their clocks (most of them automatically nowadays) is so much easier than everybody changing schedules.
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Makes you wonder how the majority of the world which doesn't use DST manages to cope.
Japan should have at least two, China should have 3-4, Western Europe should be 2-3, yet they all get by with one.
Automatic changes are nice, as long as the calculation of the date and the time it happens never changes. Even within the EU, the switch over time isn't consistent - some countries are 1AM, some are 2AM, some are 3AM.
Re: (Score:2)
> Western Europe should be 2-3
Portugal and Ireland are an hour behind the main block of EU countries (CET), Spain should be as well but General Franco decreed that his country should be in the same timezone as his hero (Adolf Hitler) and they never changed it back after he died. I suppose France should also be in the same time zone as Portugal, Ireland and the UK but that probably has more to with wanting to have the same time as the rest of the original EU (called Common Market then) rather than a desire to
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the exact hour at which the change is made is adjusted for timezone, and based off UTC (so including leap seconds).
For automated systems, they have to account for that difference when calculating DST times. It annoys users because they expect it to "just work", but unless the system knows which timezone it is in then it can't be fully automated.
It would be better to just not bother with it, and if particular groups want to have different summer and winter opening times they can do that themselves. It's
Re: (Score:2)
> "For many Arkansans, permanent daylight savings time would mean the sun wouldn't rise until after 8:00 or even 8:30am during the dead of winter," Cotton continued. "The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children and working Americans."
And yet Alaska and Canada have somehow always made it work, year after year.
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Nobody said that it wasn't possible to cope without it - but having it makes coping with the seasonal changes easier.
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What they should do is define 6:00 AM to be whenever dawn happens.
Re:I want to keep the status quo (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is called "local time", and we abandoned it for good the moment railways and telegraph were invented.
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Blame the Great Western Railway.
I thought Saudi Arabia was on "sun time" until relatively recently, that would mean within the last 20 years.
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If you have to look up a time zone table every time you do a call outside your longitude, you would wish people at least in your region could agree on a common time.
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Saudi Arabia switched from "Arabic time" (based on local sunset) to conventional solar time in 1968.
Re:I want to keep the status quo (Score:4)
The traditional method is to define noon as when the sun is at its zenith.
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And noon is a palindrome made of letters in the middle of the alphabet.
But the word comes from Latin nonus ("ninth"), and with sunrise at 6, that would have been nine hours later, around 3 p.m. in Old English.
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I feel like northern Alaska is going to have some complaints about that system when they're at hour 5320 of a day in summer
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I've been saying this for a long time, though I would say 7am. Of course, sunrise time is different depending not just your longitude, but also your latitude, so we would be back to picking a sample location for each time zone. And this means adjusting clocks every night. Just slightly near the solstices, but more significantly closer to the equinoxes. So all clocks would need to have automated changes. This would be a great chance to get rid of all manually set clocks while creating lots of waste.
And
Sunrise Time (Score:2)
I propose we switch to Sunrise Time. Instead of AM and PM, we have Day and Night. The Day starts at sunrise and Night starts at sunset. So we would have times like: D1:30 (an hour and a half after sunrise) or N0:00 (sunset). We could also have negative time: N-1:00 (an hour before sunset). The day would start at sunrise, but if using negative day time, it would refer to the day of the sunrise, even though the same time expressed as positive Night time would be the previous day.
So someone might set the
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Why do business schedules need to change with the season? And wouldn't it depend on the business anyway?
I'm curious to know what businesses you're even thinking of. I know farmers hate the time changes. I know office workers hate the time changes. I can't think of any reason a factory would need to open earlier during the warmer months than the colder months.
Who actually wants it?
(Also I can't believe I agree with TFG about something. Urgh. I need to shower.)
Re: (Score:3)
It had nothing to do with businesses. Somewhere in the 60s and up until the early 70s everything did standardize on DST, but people didn't like their kids walking to school in the dark. Congress then brought about clock switching in response. The same class of insecure parent who didn't want their kid walking in the dark now drives their kids to school, so it's not so much of an issue now.
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> The same class of insecure parent who didn't want their kid walking in the dark now drives their kids to school, so it's not so much of an issue now.
Tom "The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children" Cotton obviously doesn't. His kids probably still ride horses.
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But when we change our clocks, we ARE changing our schedules..
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Can't we just move it 30 minutes and be done with it? Split the difference and never look back.
DST is DUMB (Score:2)
Independent of if you like changing the clocks or not going DST all the time is just stupid.
We have words, noon for example means the sun should be directly overhead. Midday, Midnight, should be the middle of the day or the middle of the night respectively; where day is the period where the sun is out, and night is the period where it isn't.
If people want to stop chaining the clocks were should adopt standard-time all the time. If you then believe we should have more 'evening' hours of daylight, we should
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Going to permanent daylight saving time because you hate changing the clocks is like being sick of all the picture frames in your house being askew and solving the problem by gluing them to the wall--at a fifteen-degree angle.
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That is a great analogy. Next time someone brings it up in person conversation, I think I'll use it.
Thanks
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> That is a great analogy. Next time someone brings it up in person conversation, I think I'll use it.
> Thanks
Agreed.
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If you mean "permanent standard time" would be preferable, I agree. But permanent DST is better than changing the clocks twice a year.
Re:DST is DUMB (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sun is at its highest point at different times, depending on the longitude. And the culmination is not necessarily at the geographical South at the time either, because the Sun is describing a curve called [1]analemma [wikipedia.org] each year. This means that even locally, you have two different times, the so called actual local time (which means that not every day is 24 hrs long), and the average local time (with days of 24 hrs each).
Time keeping is hard science, so hard, that Mankind invented a whole academic subject about it, called astronomy. Every time keeping system will be a compromise, and each time keeping system will have its advantages and disadvantages. To think some hand waving and mumbling about "high noon" will solve that means that you don't know much about the subject.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
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The reduction to ~24 time zones is a relatively recent phenomenon. Made when trade expanded over large areas and computers didn't exist. I believe we definitely should go back to the way it was pre 1800's. Virtually everyone get's their time from a computer or microcontroller now and most calculate time zones far better than people. Just allow every urban area to set their own time zone. The problem with permanent DST versus not is it hurts people on the extreme edges of the time zones. And those on one edg
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I want more evening hours of daylight, but I don't want to get up earlier.
And we have a new #1 (Score:2)
It used to be Trump at #1 most hated on my list, but now it's Senator Cotton. A pox upon his house! A pox I say!
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> It used to be Trump at #1 most hated on my list, but now it's Senator Cotton.
> A pox upon his house! A pox I say!
He's in the Senate, not the House. :-)
(and the House already has a pox on it)
Set your own schedules (Score:5, Insightful)
> "The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children and working Americans."
There is nothing stopping schools or businesses in northern areas from starting an hour later in the winter. Don't make everybody go through this hell because you are too unimaginative to fix your own problems.
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I never thought of Arkansas as being especially far north
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it is northern most of the confederate states, if you discount other states.
My grandfather used to say (Score:4, Funny)
"daylight savings time was invented by rich politicians as a means of playing more golf"
The fact that Trump wants to make it permanent supports this theory.
An uncomfortable feeling (Score:2)
This could very well make Trump [1]the Stalin of the USA [latimes.com].
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-22-mn-627-story.html
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> Any single senator can object to a UC request
You mean "unanimous consent" requires unanimity? Quelle surprise.
Why is there Daylight savings time? (Score:4, Insightful)
People who created the concept were not stupid. It is based on the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid, and tilts on its axis, and rotates around the sun.
So at different times of the year, the day/night 24 hour cycle makes for differences in light and dark times.
The length of daylight at the equators does not change that much over the course of the year.
The length of daylight varies more and more as the latitude increases. Eventually, it reaches a point where there are months that the sun does not set, and months where it does not rise.
What does this lead to? People who live closer to the equator find the concept of DST/ST annoying and stupid because they are taking their situation, little difference between summer and winter daylight length.
The further north or south you go from the equator, Daylight Savings time makes more sense. Eventually the differences between summer and winter daylight become so extreme (think land of the midnight sun) that there is no compensation.
Daylight Savings time is a simple 1 hour shift back and forth to compensate for that.
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daylight variation for the seasons is about 4 hrs mid-latitude and 10 hrs high-latitude. Thus a 1 hr shift is not much of a difference in this regard. Maybe some psychological boost, but surely in the modern world you're looking at some kind of screen all day anyway.
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That's a neurological boost, not purely psychological. Sunlight is what tells your pineal gland to stop producing sleepy hormones and let your brain wake up.
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No it doesn't make sense.
It was done as a joke by Ben Franklin where he suggested people wake up earlier in the summer to save candle costs.
In the equatorial region, it makes little sense since the sun gets up and sets pretty consistently all year round.
At the poles, an hour shift does absolutely nothing - at the extreme ends, 24 hours of sunlight means no daylight to save - the sun is up and stays up (and consequently in the winter, it never rises)
When you have 16-18 hours of sunlight, DST makes no sense a
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Example;
Today in Spokane, sunrise at 7:30, sunset at 5:36. 10:06 of daylight.
December 21; back on standard time, so sunrise at 7:35, sunset at 4:00, 8:25 of daylight.
June 21; DST, sunrise 4:51, sunset at 8:51; 15:59 of daylight.
Winter make solar power a problem and the overcast skies make that even worse.
Summer makes star gazing a problem. True night is from midnight to 1:40 AM.
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And yet I feel the difference.
Much of the problem (Score:3)
arises from the fact that large parts of the US that are geographically in the Central Time Zone are on Eastern Time. This skews the time of sunrise and sunset no matter what we do. I personally would prefer to stay on standard time year-round. Permanent day light savings time would be my distant second choice, with the current system buried somewhere below zero on a 1-10 scale.
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> the fact that large parts of the US that are geographically in the Central Time Zone are on Eastern Time
Moving to permanent Summer Time would fix that for those areas.
Can we not make rapid clock changes? (Score:2)
I am all for making DST permanent, but can we not make it take effect in a matter of a few days? Times falling out of sync can cause any number of random issues, and there are plenty of systems out there for which the "speed of light" time for a software update is weeks or months. (This is particularly a problem for Windows systems that to this day by default persist in the mistake of having the hardware clock be in local time.)
Of for frack's sake (Score:3, Informative)
Senator Cotton bleating about "teh chilldrun" or working people is rich. Here's a breakdown:
1) Farmers who have animals HATE daylight savings time. You think a hog, lamb, goat, or heifer watches a clock? Nope, change the time and you're just making the farmer change when they have to get up.
2) Regular workers do not care if it's dark out in the morning. Since America is car dependent they're probably driving to work anyway. In the cities with mass transit all it does is muck with people's schedules no different than the farmer because someone has to run the buses / trains.
3) Finally - "FER TEH CHILLDRUN" is kind of pointless because, if you REALLY wanted them to be safer you'd be doing what we did in the 1950's and 1960's: Force anyone building a subdivision to build proper roads AND SIDEWALKS WITH STREETLIGHTS. You'd also, I don't know, HIRE SOME CROSSING GUARDS. OH NOES YOU MIGHT MAKE PEOPLE BUILD INFRASTRUCTURE THAT FREES THEM TO WALK SAFELY!
Senator dimwit should be booted from office to go bleat his idiocy elsewhere.
Thank you Senator Cotton (Score:1)
For now. Changing the time rules is always a pain, but changing them with only about a week of warning would have been absolute chaos.
No thank you, Senator Cotton (Score:2)
> For now.
> Changing the time rules is always a pain, but changing them with only about a week of warning would have been absolute chaos.
So did Senator Cotton constructively propose some kind of amendment that would set the change to occur in February 2026, giving everyone plenty of warning?
Or did he just block this to destroy any forward movement on the subject?
Follow the KISS Principle (Score:3)
Just get rid of clock changes altogether, and set the time in reference to UTC and time zone without any "daylight savings" type adjustment. Each of the 24 time zones (-12 to +12) should be one hour off from it's neighbors, and should be straight (time doesn't care about state lines).
There also should be no half hour off zones. If that matters that much, just use UTC and forget about time zones altogether.
This makes sense and it's trump? (Score:2)
I'm actually all for this. It's an outdated thing that is not needed at all.
You need to set it to a date in the future like 2030 though so all computer systems can get the update without issue.
Re: (Score:2)
I need it! Anyone with Seasonal Affective Disorder needs it. Almost every human benefits when they wake up to sunlight. Your pineal gland needs it to flip over from producing melatonin to producing serotonin.
If you really want to get rid of it, pick a way that means morning sun year-round.
New proposition (Score:2)
Make the seconds variable, not fixed. Then program an algorithm that slightly changes it every day throughout the year, so dawn, high noon and dusk happens in the exact same hour:minute everyday for each location. That way no one can complain anymore! /s
Who gives a flock? (Score:3)
Seriously. I don't want to change time twice a year because, in the end, the only thing it does is keeps me driving into the sun on both ends of the day for twice as long as I normally would. Right about the time the sun stops shining directly in my face *BOOM* time change, sun is back to shining directly in my face.
That said, in the dead of winter, most of us see no sun anyway. It's dark when we get to work, it's dark when we leave work, we sometimes catch a glimpse out a window during the day of what sunlight looks like, and daydream about summer when there's a few hours of it to enjoy after work. So, really, jumping through the time hoops is an exercise in futility for big portions of the country, and feels increasingly like just one more burden placed on all of us so that somebody, somewhere, can bitch about whose fault it is. Who cares? Winter is darkness. Stop fucking around with the clocks.
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Well, for me, changing the clocks means I do get some morning sun in the winter. That matters quite a lot for me, and for millions of other people.
I am sorry to hear about the length of your commute though. That sounds awful.
Tom Cotton is a loser stuck in the past (Score:2)
Instead of moving the clocks back an hour every fall/winter, how about staying up an hour later at night and sleep in an hour later every morning, same with all business & schools just move the hours of operation to start an hour later and close an hour later
Split the difference (Score:2)
Just move the clocks forward half an hour and leave it that way year round. We make everyone happy by not moving the clocks anymore and we make everyone unhappy because they don't get to keep standard or daylight time. Effective compromises are when everyone is a bit happy and a bit unhappy. There are many timezones in the world that are on half or even quarter hour offsets, so it would not be without precedent.
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Because then there wouldn't be anything for people to fight over!
Who is that passionate about DST? (Score:3)
I can see saying no, I won't vote for permanent Day Light Saving Time.
But why in God's green Earth would ANYONE think this is their line in the sand, and shout YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
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I care about it. I care a lot about having sunlight in the morning. Like millions of others, it has a large effect on my ability to wake up and the mood I wake up in.
If the changeover is a problem, then I'd be fine with making winter time permanent. But , I don't really think the changeover is a problem. It happens on Saturday, so most workers have time to adjust, and once a year it means an extra hour of sleep during the season it matters most.
I'm eagerly awaiting it now, it's dark again when my
Stop daylight savings time (Score:2)
We're 24 fucking 7.
DST doesn't save energy.
Stop trying to legislate science you idiots.
Then opt out. Simple as that. (Score:2)
Then opt out you dishonest fuck.
That's the whole god damned point of this.
The law currently says that states can opt out of DST but they can't have permanent DST.
With it permanent states can still opt out so this gives the choice back to the states.
You know STATES RIGHTS? That thing you lying fucks keep claiming to support but never actually do.
Impossible (Score:1)
It won't work. Make it permanent, then all those things to which people commute in the dark to get there, will adjust their hours for light during that travel, so in a few years you'll be right back to "standard" time with 9 AM to 4 PM school, 10 AM to 6 PM work, and you still won't be able to get your yard work done on weekdays after work + commute, and have it interfere with golf / fishing / whatever on the weekends - can't go play because mowing, weed whacking, leaf raking, hedge trimming, watering, et
Everyone should be on UTC / Zulu time (Score:1)
Local time IS the confusion. Just put everyone on UTC. It will be a little confusing during the transition but you'll get used to stores being open and normal working hours being from 13:00Z to 21:00Z. We all live in a network connected world and physically connected via air travel. We should all be using the same time (zone).
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Well, that's basically what China does. It makes no sense whatsoever, but they do it.
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Not so great for traveling folks. I'm in favor of going back to the 18'th century and having every locality set noon at peak solar for their urban area. That way lunch is always around noon. Timezone calculators already go by urban area now. As you said most time keeping devices already pull from local sources or have timezone tables built in. Just keep legal agreements at UTC time to avoid confusion.
Who Cares! (Score:2)
DST... Standard... who cares! Just pick one and stick with it. A year from now everyone will forget they cared.
THANK YOU! (Score:2)
If we standardized on winter time, that'd be fine by me because I need that morning sun. But no, they want to standardize on summer time, which means no morning sun for months. Very bad for mental health.
So, thank you Senator Cotton! I really appreciate it.
Bypass the Senate... (Score:2)
Bypass the Senate. The law regarding DST requires Federal law to make DST permanent, but doesn't require any special law for states to eliminate DST entirely and go on Standard Time year-round. Cotton can't do a thing about that , and maybe he'll develop some sense when the choice is between Standard and DST year-round rather than DST year-round vs. only in the summer.
Sen. Tom Cotton (Score:5, Funny)
He's a pawn of big clock!
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Careful how you read that.
Big retail actually (Score:1)
Brick and mortar wants daylight savings because it adds an extra hour of shopping.
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See, I don't get it. Just change your business hours - it's not hard.
Re: Big retail actually (Score:1)
"framing effect"
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Yeah, but they never had it before and still did most of their sales when there is the least amount of sunlight. We "fall back" before Black Friday.
Brick and mortars are already doing peak business in the winter. I'm not sure why they think there's room for more, or why they think darkness is hindering them when they're already at their busiest.
Re: (Score:2)
I love the "___'s just a shill for big (something ridiculous)" joke framing. When my brother-in-law said I wasn't cleaning the tub in my washing machine often enough (it was broken), I condemned him for being a shill for "big function". "Oooo, things should work. F-K YOU!"