Trump wants to end Daylight Savings Time

[SInNYC]

I think a little history is in order. During the 70s energy crisis, Nixon went to permanent DST. It was. not. popular. People complained loudly about kids waiting in the dark for school busses. It was also repealed soon.

People who want permanent standard time should live in Japan a year and make sure they really want it. The US is worse too since Tokyo is approximately at LAs latitude, and the majority of the population (including Osaka) is south of Tokyo. ...not to mention lots of lights in cities there as opposed to mostly dark areas in the US.

[Storr]

I think a little history is in order. During the 70s energy crisis, Nixon went to permanent DST. It was. not. popular. People complained loudly about kids waiting in the dark for school busses. It was also repealed soon.

People who want permanent standard time should live in Japan a year and make sure they really want it. The US is worse too since Tokyo is approximately at LAs latitude, and the majority of the population (including Osaka) is south of Tokyo. ...not to mention lots of lights in cities there as opposed to mostly dark areas in the US.

Going down the rabbit hole, it appears that the government found there was no significant impact on energy usage due to the 1974-75 trial period for year round DST. It makes sense the trial wasn't made permanent. If energy wasn't being saved and there was even a chance the change made kids more unsafe, people were going to want to go back to having DST in effect only part of the year.

"DOT provided an interim evaluation and final report on the operation and effects of DST in 1974 and 1975. The interim report’s findings were inconclusive, stating that the observed effects were “so small that they could not in general be reliably separated from effects of other changes occurring at the time." The report concluded that, “there is no unambiguous direct evidence that [the measurable effects of year-round daylight saving time] were either beneficial or harmful.""

Additionally, when it comes to the people complaining about kids waiting for the school bus in the dark: "statistically significant evidence was found of increased fatalities among school-age children in the mornings during the four-month period January-April 1974 as compared with the same period (non-DST) of 1973". Though "this increase cannot be simply interpreted as ‘DST effect,’ in view of the many other factors that influence traffic fatalities".

[Rhode Islander First, American Second]

This is the kind of thing that could get his approval ratings up to like 70% and keep the Republican party in power for a long time.

[Senator Sirius]

I think a little history is in order. During the 70s energy crisis, Nixon went to permanent DST. It was. not. popular. People complained loudly about kids waiting in the dark for school busses. It was also repealed soon.

People who want permanent standard time should live in Japan a year and make sure they really want it. The US is worse too since Tokyo is approximately at LAs latitude, and the majority of the population (including Osaka) is south of Tokyo. ...not to mention lots of lights in cities there as opposed to mostly dark areas in the US.

Japan is effectively on reverse DST. Their timezone is an hour behind where it should be, resulting in earlier sunrises and sunsets than true standard time. Solar noon is in the AM.

[°Leprechaun:'s Rainbow]

Trump hates daylight!

[dkxdjy]

What do the polls say, are there any recent opinion polls on this issue? I think it would be nice if some reputable polling firm would commission a public poll, with the three options (permanent DST, permanent Standard Time, status quo).

Personally I like permanent DST, having extra daylight in the evening is nice, more important to me than in the early morning when I'm likely not fully awake anyway. But if not that then I also prefer permanent Standard Time to the status quo

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-americans-really-want-permanent-daylight-saving-time/

Among the 63 percent of people who wanted to eliminate the practice of gaining or losing an hour, 48 percent said they wanted permanent daylight saving time, 29 percent said they wanted permanent standard time and 21 percent had no preference.

[Sic Semper Tyrannis]

Yeah, being light in the morning is more important from a safety and welfare perspective(especially for children) than an extra hour of evening.

[dkxdjy]

Yeah, being light in the morning is more important from a safety and welfare perspective(especially for children) than an extra hour of evening.

I remember when I was in middle and high school I had some activities that made me need to stay in school until 5-6 PM so I'd sometimes end up walking home in the dark in winter anyway. Don't know how common this is but especially with the push to start schools later having light in the evening could become more important.

[Frodo]

In the end he didn't do it, in large part because there is no consensus among the American people (and therefore in Congress) on what should replace our current system:

Trump blinks on ending daylight saving time

Donald Trump entered the White House having promised to revoke Biden administration policies, to pull the nation out of international alliances and conflicts … and to finally end the practice of “springing forward” and “falling back.”

“Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” the president-elect wrote on social media in December, vowing that Republicans would use their “best efforts” to eliminate the century-old practice of moving the clocks forward one hour every spring and back in the fall.

But locking the clock has proved more politically difficult than rolling back some of Joe Biden’s policies. Polls have shown that most Americans oppose the time shifts but disagree on what should replace them.

Today, roughly two-thirds of Americans want to end the clock changes, polls show. But even those Americans don’t agree on what should come next. An October 2023 YouGov poll found that 33 percent of respondents wanted year-round daylight saving time, 23 percent wanted permanent standard time, and 9 percent had no preference. The remainder weren’t sure or preferred to remain on the current system.

Most Americans now live with daylight saving time for 238 days a year — nearly eight months. (Two states, Hawaii and most of Arizona, have opted out of the semiannual time changes and remain on permanent standard time, which states are allowed to do.)

But states cannot adopt permanent daylight saving time unless Congress passes a bill that allows them to do so.

Even on this forum, we had a poll or thread discussing possible alternatives, and we are clearly as divided here as the outside world.  Refreshingly, politics did not figure into the debate, so the issue reached across the political divide. 

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Absolutely idiotic dithering.

[C r a b c a k e]

My reform: have the "day" flexible depending on the year; so working hours decrease during winter months and increase in the summer.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

Broken clock moment for Trump.

[emailking]

Maybe permanent daylight time or standard time should be determined by a coin flip just so that we can break the impasse and get rid of the clock changing. I'd be ok with it.

[Wrong about 2024 Ghost]

Maybe permanent daylight time or standard time should be determined by a coin flip just so that we can break the impasse and get rid of the clock changing. I'd be ok with it.

The one thing where an arbitrary decision by one guy that no one likes would arguably be an improvement over the status quo, and fraud, rapist, and felon Donald Trump can't even follow through on his promise. What a useless pile of toxic orange feces.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Promises made, promises broken! As usual!

[Senator Sirius]

It isn't really a Trump thing because of the inability of America to decide what it wants but everything is Trump's fault now so Trump made me lose an hour of sleep.

[DrScholl]

Who cares? This is irrelevant, performative nonsense that does nothing of substance long term and it was only put out there because Trump knows basic people will view it as the biggest change ever. And he couldn't even manage to do something that was fairly minimal.

[Schumer can go f*** himself!]

We should get an extra hour of sunlight year round!

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

Promises made, promises broken! As usual!

"Promises broke" rolls off the tongue better. One syllable.