Daylight saving time 2025: Will President Donald Trump end the time change? What to know
In less than a month, most Americans will lose an hour of sleep as clocks will shift ahead by one hour.
Daylight saving time will begin, delaying the moment day becomes night more than four months after it concluded in November.
Though twice-annual time change has been practiced since daylight saving time's adoption in 1918, many Americans have long grown frustrated with the constant time shifts. Lawmakers have made strides to put an end to the clock changes by trying to make daylight saving time permanent, or by promising to remove it all together.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act that would make daylight saving time permanent, however the U.S. House of Representatives did not pass it and former President Joe Biden did not sign it.
Before taking office, President Donald Trump said in December that he aims to put an end to daylight saving time and make standard time year-round.
"The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!" Trump wrote in a Dec. 13 Truth Social post. "Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation."
Here's what to know about the state of daylight saving time.
When does daylight saving time start?
Daylight saving time is set to begin on Sunday, March 9.
What is daylight saving time?
Daylight saving time is the time between March and November when most Americans adjust their clocks ahead by one hour.
We lose an hour in March (as opposed to gaining an hour in the fall) to make for more daylight in the summer evenings. In the Northern Hemisphere, the vernal, or spring equinox is on March 20, marking the start of the spring season.
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Why do we have daylight saving time?
Most people have heard the myth that daylight saving time came about to give farmers an extra hour of sunlight in the evening.
But in reality, farmers led the opposition to daylight saving time in 1919, a year after it was implemented in the U.S. as a wartime measure.
"The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive," according to History.com. "Farmers had to wait an extra hour for dew to evaporate to harvest hay, hired hands worked less since they still left at the same time for dinner and cows weren’t ready to be milked an hour earlier to meet shipping schedules."
Nationwide daylight saving time was repealed in 1919, though states and cities still had the option to enact it for themselves, leading to a patchwork of time zones across the country until the Uniform Time Act passed in 1966.
Has Trump passed legislation on daylight saving time?
Trump has yet to pass any executive legislation to permanently end daylight saving time as of Wednesday.
Paste BN has reached out to the White House for comment.
When did federal time changes start?
The Standard Time Act of 1918 was the first law to implement standard and daylight saving times at the federal level.
"Federal oversight of time zones began in 1918 with the enactment of the Standard Time Act, which vested the Interstate Commerce Commission with the responsibility for establishing boundaries between the standard time zones in the U.S.," according to The U.S. Department of Transportation. "This responsibility was transferred from the Interstate Commerce Commission to DOT when Congress created DOT in 1966."
Who is in charge of daylight saving time?
The DOT oversees the observance of daylight saving time as well as U.S. time zones, according to transportation.gov. The DOT cited energy reduction and reduced crime are reasons for having both standard and daylight saving time.
Which states don't observe daylight saving time?
Arizona and Hawaii do not recognize daylight saving time as well as territories Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas.
Contributing: Alexis Simmerman, Jana Hayes, The Oklahoman, Jennifer Sangalang, Paste BN Network.