The history of Daylight Saving Time. According to the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Benjamin Franklin invented the concept in 1784, believing that rising earlier would economize candle usage and save people money. Pushing clocks forward to make greater use of daylight during the warmer months was formally adopted during World War I as part of a global attempt to conserve energy.”
In 1966, congress passed a Uniform Time Act, which led us to officially use the Daylight Savings Time change but allowed states to opt out and exempt themselves from the practice to stay on standard time year-round.
Currently, only Hawaii and Arizona are on permanent standard time. This means that they do not fall back, nor spring forward like the rest of the United States.
Like many Americans, President Donald Trump is not a fan of moving the clocks back an hour every November and forward again in March. The President pledged he would end the practice once and for all.
Let us break down why this is a controversial topic.
President Trump posted on the social media app, X, on December 13th stating, “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 aims to eliminate Daylight Saving Time. What does the media have to say about this?
Starting by, why would this not work? We have already tried this. Two years ago, the Senate passed a bill to switch the Daylight Saving Time permanently, however, the bill died in the House. The Senate wanted us to spring forward, and keep it that way, whereas President Trump sways to the side of staying fallen back.
Although there are reasons to not adapt to the permanent time, others state that the potential permanent time has more benefits than negatives. Kenneth Wright, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder shared in an interview with FOX News, that the better option is to adopt a permanent standard time, “Change itself is a challenge, forward every spring, that week we have an increased chance of fatal car accidents, heart attacks and strokes. These risks are because everyone is getting less sleep. We are waking up at a time our brain says we should be sleeping.”
Marc Siegel, M.D. / Fox News Medical Contributor says, “It’s better to have a uniform time that your biological clock gets used to.”
Now, who knows if President Trump will get a ban on Daylight Saving, but it is up to the people to decide if this is a beneficial thing, or if we need to stay falling back and springing forward.