President-elect Donald Trump has many plans for his return to office, but took to his social media platform Friday afternoon to share another.
In a post on TruthSocial, Trump said he would work with Republicans to permanently eliminate daylight saving time during his second term.
“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” Trump wrote.
In 1918, the Interstate Commerce Commission (was created to solidify plans to create a standardized time. This led to the passing of the Standard Time Act, which created five time zones for the United States — Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific and Alaska.
Daylight saving time was first created with the Standard Time Act but was not mandatory. It was meant to help save energy during World War I.
In 1966, the Uniform Time Act established mandatory daylight saving time. The idea was to switch to daylight saving time during the time of year when days are the longest to save on energy costs and consumption.
In 2005, Congress agreed to amend the Uniform Time Act to start daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March, and from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.
This led to debate over whether or not to make daylight saving time permanent.
Over half of states support the Sunshine Protection Act, which would federally mandate permanent daylight saving time. While the Senate passed it unanimously in 2022, it died in the House. The current status has the act reintroduced, but not much else has happened.
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, seems interested in the removal of time changes.
In a post on X in November, Musk wrote, “Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!”
Ramaswamy responded, “It’s inefficient & easy to change.” Even Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., chimed in, writing, “Leave it daylight savings time always.”
It is unclear whether Trump’s efforts would constitute eliminating daylight saving outright or making it permanent.
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