President Donald Trump renewed his push on Thursday to make daylight saving time permanent, after the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a larger measure that includes the Sunshine Protection Act in a 48-1 vote.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year by people, cities and states forced to change their clocks, adding that many of the clocks are in towers and cost too much to move with heavy equipment twice a year. He called the ritual ridiculous and said it was time for people to stop worrying about the clock.
The latest step matters because the daylight saving time bill was not moving on its own. Rep. Vern Buchanan’s office said the Sunshine Protection Act was included as a provision within an amendment in the nature of a substitute to the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act, which the committee marked up and sent to the House floor on Thursday.
Trump has been pressing Congress on the issue for months. In April 2025, he said the House and Senate should push hard for more daylight at the end of a day and argued there should be no more changing of the clocks. He made a similar appeal last year, telling Congress to address the issue.
The proposal already has backing in both chambers. The Sunshine Protection Act has 32 bipartisan cosponsors in the House, and the Senate companion bill, S. 29, has 18 bipartisan cosponsors. If enacted, it would make daylight saving time permanent without forcing a state that does not observe daylight saving time to start doing so.
Trump also framed the effort as a political opportunity, saying permanent daylight saving time would be a very nice win for the Republican Party. His latest post cast the issue as an easy choice: keep the clocks changing, or move to what he called the far more popular alternative and save daylight.
The practical question now is not whether the idea has a public champion — it does — but whether Congress turns a familiar seasonal complaint into law. The committee vote put the measure on the House floor, and the White House has made clear it wants lawmakers to keep pushing.
