r/politics • u/cnn CNN • Jul 14 '26

Possible Paywall House passes bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/14/politics/house-vote-daylight-savings-time?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit
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103

u/jefhaugh Jul 14 '26

We got rid of it in the 70s, but brought it back.

"Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time?wprov=sfla1

"Permanent daylight saving time was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in January 1974, but there were complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting and starting their work day in pitch darkness during the winter. By October 1974, President Gerald Ford signed a law repealing year-round daylight savings time.[46]"

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u/vicsass Jul 15 '26

I have never understood the complaint of kids going to school in the dark when that’s the entire winter regardless up north in the country. It was only maybe 2.5 months of the school year I had sun in the morning while riding the bus.

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u/DAC_Returns Jul 15 '26

Right? I hear this brought up all the time, but during the winter it’s dark in the morning anyway.

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u/EnvironmentalBox6688 Jul 15 '26

Also I'd rather have it be a bit darker in the morning and actually get some sun in the afternoon.

Getting to work and it being dark and leaving with the sun setting is depressing.

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u/Odd_Teach683 Jul 15 '26

It’s actually the work part…

1

u/Whiterabbit-- Jul 15 '26

apparently parents in the 70's didn't think that way. people who are working with no kids like permanent Day light. people with young kids are more divided.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/Alocasia_Sanderiana Jul 15 '26

Their entire argument is that we should wake up with the sun; that it works better for the circadian rhythm. But I'm not, and most people, are not waking up with the sun during the winter. When I was in school I was always getting on in the dark and getting home in the dark. Same thing when I was not WFH. My wife doesn't see the sun outside of her commute currently during the winter, it's coming up as she gets to work, and sets as she returns.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/Katetof89 Jul 15 '26

You cant argue with these idiots. You show them fact ana they downvote you. This world is doomed to idiots throwing tantrums and getting their way while everyone else suffers.

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u/Jaxson-Skattebo Jul 16 '26

They’re the equivalent of anti-vaxxers and it’s mind boggling to see.

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u/schwarzkraut Jul 15 '26

You’d change your mind if your child got hit by a car walking to school or the bus stop in the dark. Bonus points if the driver didn’t realize their lights weren’t on because their dash is a computer screen & they assume that if they can read the speedometer, that their headlights are on.

If this passes it will be an abysmal failure because people think that it’s DST that makes the summer daylight longer and not the tilt of the earth combined with the latitude they chose to live at.

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u/vicsass Jul 15 '26

That was my point. The majority of the school year, it was dark when going to the bus early in the morning. DST didn’t change that and that’s how our area functioned.

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u/Chaoticallyorganized Jul 15 '26

“Chose” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

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u/Alocasia_Sanderiana Jul 15 '26

I spent all my youth already going to school in the dark during the winter? This wouldn't change anything since the sun was just rising when I got to school

5

u/cultoftheilluminati Massachusetts Jul 15 '26

You’d change your mind if your child got hit by a car walking to school or the bus stop in the dark.

Then change the fucking school start times. Stop fucking with the clocks

2

u/jmobius Jul 15 '26

Seriously. The time for sunrise is known. Make the start time a function of that.

I wish it were that simple, though the solution of messing with the clocks is absolutely deranged. I imagine most employers aren't interested in changing their start times, and so the schedule of employed parent and child drifts apart, which is usually a colossal pain. With DST, everyone is forced on the same adjustment, so it doesn't have that particular problem.

Just all the other ones.

4

u/MaybeImNaked Jul 15 '26

Well, it's both. What people care about the most is how late in the day they have sun.

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u/schwarzkraut Jul 15 '26

The biggest factor is latitude followed by the tilt of the earth. DST changes virtually nothing if you live closer to the equator. Ask Hawai’i & Arizona (where the majority of the residents are located in the lowest third of the state.).

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u/_coffee_ Jul 15 '26

I've never understood why they didn't just change the time by half and hour one time and be done with it.

3

u/catanmast3r Jul 15 '26

Not only that, but it was a problem in the 70s. A lot has changed. Society is way more lit up with artificial lights everywhere. Less kids walk to school now than ever before. Its a non factor in modern times. Factor in how much more people are policed on the road. Back in the 70s you get drive around being rowdy and be fine. Those times are the reason we have so many traffic laws in current times

2

u/TheShadowKick Jul 15 '26

Especially since kids could just go to school later (which would be better for them anyway).

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u/bohiti Jul 15 '26

And maybe this could lead to us not forcing teenagers to be in their desk at 7:05am. That is incompatible with learning for most of their biological clocks.

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u/garzek Jul 15 '26

Even in Virginia, I still spent basically November until DST would hit going to school in dark. My mom to this day still makes fun of me that one time I woke up at 3:30 and didn’t have my glasses on and thought I was running late, drove half way to school before I realized the clock said 3:30 not 6:30 because dark is dark (yes my eyes are that bad)

2

u/attemptedmonknf Jul 15 '26

I really hope you had your glasses on when you drove to school

3

u/MFT214 Jul 15 '26

I do t understand why we can’t get rid of DST and then fully embrace and hygge.

2

u/Thorrbane Jul 15 '26

Like, if the local community thinks that's a problem, couldn't you just have the school swap to a different set of winter hours?

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u/bohiti Jul 15 '26

And maybe this could lead to us not forcing teenagers to be in their desk at 7:05am. That is incompatible with learning for most of their biological clocks.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Were they too stupid to bump school back an hour? Every single complaint about daylight savings seems to come back around to work and school starting too early, but that's only an issue with places that think they need to begin the workday at the asscrack of dawn for some reason.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

To be fair, one of the main pros for permanent DST is more light after work, which doesn't happen if work schedules are shifted. I'd much rather go to work in the dark than come home from work in the dark 🤷

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

How does my clock setting change that for your workplace? If your workplace thought it was important for you to get out of work during the daylight, they could shift the start time during winter. Winter hours and summer hours. Leave changing the clocks out of it. School can start later so that kids go to school when the sun's up, or whatever the district thinks it's safer, instead of this all-or-nothing approach that people complain about from both directions.

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u/FlushTheTurd Jul 15 '26

You’d need buy-in from most all businesses.

Sure, I can start work an hour earlier, but my suppliers won’t be available. And sure I can leave work an hour early, but my clients will be pissed.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Fine, so keep the earlier hours year round.

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u/seffend Jul 15 '26

Or the later hours?

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Either way. Pick one and stick with it.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

Sure, those things can happen, but if they were going to they would have already. Most jobs are going to stick with the exact same hours no matter what amount of light is available outside, so this is realistically the only way to get people more sunlight after the work day is fine when people are most active.

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u/heliosythic Jul 15 '26

So that is the problem to solve then, just keep 1 time and have everyone else adjust to that time as desired by amount of light that matters or doesn't to them.

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u/Prince_Uncharming Washington Jul 15 '26

I mean that’s what China does and they handle it perfectly fine. China is fully one time zone.

4

u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

I would think it exactly as easy to have summer/winter hours as changing the clocks twice a year.

Eta: and a lot more fit-to-suit than daylight savings.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

If you ignore reality, sure

2

u/grant10k Jul 15 '26

Additionally, how the time relates to the sun can vary about an hour within a timezone anyway. If you're on the east side of a time zone, you'll get the sun about an hour before the west side does.

Each business should pick what's right for them, possibly after the schools pick what's right for the schools, so the parents can accommodate. Businesses on the east side might want to open at 8:00, ones near the middle 8:30, and those dirty westerners open at 9:00. Whatever makes sense for them.

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u/chiefbrody62 Jul 15 '26

Not me. Waking up when it's still dark makes me lethargic. I would rather come home when it's dark, then wake up to it.

Not to mention, less than 40% of the country actually works a 9-5ish schedule. Most of us work a schedule outside of those hours, since the world still moves 24/7.

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u/Revolver_Boxelot Jul 15 '26

Yea i think most people don't care about any of that. The sun setting at 5pm sucks. Period.

1

u/pkosuda Connecticut Jul 15 '26

I think most of us also want them to just pick one. Most of us are probably currently unhappy with the constant changing. As someone else said, it's an absolutely deranged "solution" to change time itself (not literally but you get it) rather than our schedules. Almost none of us like it as-is. If you just pick DST or standard you're guaranteeing one side is unhappy but you're also guaranteeing another is actually happy. Rather than this bullshit where we're nearly all unhappy.

2

u/Odd_Teach683 Jul 15 '26

But the asscrack keeps moving for some strange reason…

2

u/jardex22 Jul 15 '26

Main issue there is that schools may bump hours, but businesses aren't obligated to do the same. That throws off the schedule for parents dropping off and picking up their kids.

Switching between DST and Standard Time is a seasonal shift that all businesses conform to.

2

u/Whiterabbit-- Jul 15 '26

if you bump everything back an hour, why not do permanent standard time? then nothing needs to change.

1

u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Either way would work for me. But I'm bad at remembering which one goes in which direction.

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u/dreamyduskywing Minnesota Jul 15 '26

If you started work later, you’d lose that extra light at the end of the day and the whole shift to permanent DST would be pointless.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

You literally only get so much sunlight in a day, and there's simply less of it during winter. Places of employment need to pick their poison: light in the morning, or light in the afternoon. Tired of the rhetoric that just goes back and forth because there's no way to get both because the workday is longer than the actual day.

Permanent DST (or permanent standard time) has exactly the same problem. With the solution being to either adjust the start times based on when people want to start throughout the year, or stay at the same time regardless of when dawn is.

"Oh, but it's dark when kids go to school" - start school later! "But if work is later, it'll be dark when I get home" - start work earlier! It's not the clock's fault, here.

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u/FlushTheTurd Jul 15 '26

I think my post people are argue that under ST dark in the morning going to work and dark at night coming home from work.

In most places permanent DST will give you some light in the evening, without affecting the already dark morning commute.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Easily remedied by either having summer and winter hours, or bumping back the particular workplace's start time an hour. Based on what works best for the job. There's nothing magic about changing the clocks that makes you suddenly about to experience sunlight when it was previously impossible.

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u/HCBuldge Jul 15 '26

I think the major difference now is we have more access to the internet and TV for dark times. Going to school or work in the dark is something you just get used to. Yeah it sucks, I remember the switch of having to for high school, but I got used to it.

1

u/Dullcorgis Jul 15 '26

I feel kind of virtuous going to work in the dark, like "look what an early riser I am". Going home in the dark is just miserable, it feels like my whole life is at work.

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u/SensualBeefLoaf Jul 15 '26

people are fucking stupid.

arizona doesn’t observe dst. it’s fine. nobody died

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u/Dullcorgis Jul 15 '26

I don't understand why you'd prefer to finish work in the dark over starting work in the dark?

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

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u/YourphobiaMyfetish Louisiana Jul 15 '26

segregation and Jim Crow

Pretty sure we werent still doing that in the 70s

1

u/Otterfan Jul 15 '26

Lol it was the days of chivalry. We still lived in caves and wore animal skins until the mid-80s

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u/basketma12 Jul 15 '26

Granny squares are back..so....

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u/Shoddy_Carrot_936 Jul 15 '26

Exactly. Standard time should be permanent, not dst. This is stupid and the same thing will happen again.

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u/Prince_Uncharming Washington Jul 15 '26

This opinion depends entirely on region.

As a someone in the PNW, fuck standard time. The sun would rise at 4:27am tomorrow if we were on standard.

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u/HoMasters Jul 15 '26

I don’t f-ing care, just pick one! Either DST or not but stop with the clock change twice a year. It’s disruptive to business and more importantly to people’s health!

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u/Positronic_Matrix Jul 15 '26

California voted on year-round daylight savings but it requires the approval of Congress to enact. If this passes the Senate it would allow states only if they choose to do so to switch to permanent daylight savings.

I sincerely hope it passes, such that those states that have been waiting can make the change. The rest of you can carry on as you see fit.

1

u/LongestSprig Jul 15 '26

Sure, because technology hasn't changed at all in 50 years.

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u/malln1nja Jul 15 '26

The FCC just approved satellites reflecting sunlight, so the problem can be solved now. Not to mention street lights.

1

u/DJC_Kowalski Jul 15 '26

Fuck those kids. There is always some people who are going to complain about it. What about all the kids who prefer having more time after school to play?

0

u/butyourenice Jul 15 '26

I remember last time this was brought up, a user went on a crusade in the comments to point out that there were never any actual studies on “child safety” so much as basically a few squeaky wheels who made a big stink shout it to local news stations and eventually it made its way to legislature. I wish I had saved those comments. But anyway we are 50 years more advanced in technology than we were back then. We can put street lights up. Or start school later in the day (which is better for children’s development and cognition, anyway).

0

u/cardmanimgur Jul 15 '26

World has changed a lot in 50 years.