March 8 (UPI) — At 2 a.m. Sunday, clocks in most parts of the United States will spring forward one hour as daylight saving time begins.
They will lose one hour Sunday though there will be one more hour of daylight in the evening and daylight will come later.
The time change is on the second Sunday in March with a return to daylight saving time. The next time change is on the first Sunday in November.
The longest day is June 20 with about 15 hours of daylight in mid-northern latitudes. It is known as the summer solstice.
Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo territory, and Hawaii, do not observe daylight saving time. Also, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa don’t change their time.
There is a move to not change clocks.
Seventeen states have passed measures to always stay on daylight saving time. But Congress needs to approve it.
A bill that would make daylight saving time permanent passed in the U.S. Senate in March 2022. The Sunshine Protection Act, however, stalled in the U.S. House,
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced the legislation in 2021. Rubio is now secretary of state.
Sen. Rick Scott, also a Republican from Florida, reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act in January to “lock the clock” and “make Daylight Saving Time the year-round standard.” Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced companion legislation in the House.
President Donald Trump said Thursday: “it’s a 50-50 issue, and if something’s a 50-50 issue it’s hard to get excited about it.”
He noted: “I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark.
“It’s something I can do, but a lot of people like it one way, a lot of people like it the other way, it’s very even, and usually I find when that’s the case, what else do we have to do?” Trump said.
He can only approve it after it passes the Senate and House.
In December, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”
Fifty-four percent of those in the United States say they would prefer standard time year-round over daylight saving time, 40% are in favor of daylight saving time and 6% are uncertain, according to a Gallup poll conducted Jan. 21-27.
The time change was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on March 8, 1918. But only seven months later, World War 1 to a close, and DST was repealed. It wasn’t reintroduced until World War II
There was no uniformity in time until Uniform Time Act of 1966 was implemented by the U.S. Department of Transportation, dividing the country into different time zones and setting the official start and end dates of DST in the country as March through November. Provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 outlined that daylight saving time would start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November.