The House Rules Committee voted 6-4 Monday to advance the Sunshine Protection Act to a full chamber vote, moving Congress one step closer to ending the twice-yearly clock change that a broad majority of Americans say they want gone. The bill, authored by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), would let states lock their clocks on Daylight Saving Time year-round, with an opt-out for any state that prefers to stay put.
President Trump threw his weight behind the measure immediately, calling it "an easy one" and framing it as a straightforward win for the Republican majority. The bill already cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee 48-1 in May, a margin that suggests rare bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill. But the road to the president's desk still runs through a Senate where 60 votes are required, and where at least one prominent Republican has already voiced opposition.
For the millions of Americans who dread the biannual ritual of resetting every clock in the house, losing an hour of sleep in March, and stumbling through dark November evenings, the Sunshine Protection Act offers a simple fix. Whether Congress can actually deliver it is another question entirely.
The Sunshine Protection Act would authorize states to adopt permanent Daylight Saving Time. Hawaii and most of Arizona, which already skip the clock change, would not be required to alter their current practice. Roughly 20 states, including Alabama, South Carolina, Oregon, Maine, and Florida, have already passed their own legislation to go permanent, contingent on federal authorization. The bill would hand them that green light.
The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the measure 48-1 on May 21, folding it into Rep. Troy Nehls's Motor Vehicle Modernization Act for its trip to the House floor. Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) cast the only dissenting vote, citing concerns about children's health and sleep schedules.
Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) opened Monday's Rules Committee session by laying out the case for the bill in plain terms:
"Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of this policy and want to end the practice of 'springing forward' and 'falling back.' Locking the clock all year long would have positive impacts on sleep schedules, energy conservation, motor vehicle safety, and our economy."
Guthrie added that the change would mean "more time for people to exercise outside, visit family, attend concerts and sporting events, attract customers to their retail businesses, and more." That argument, more daylight in the evening hours, more economic activity, fewer car crashes, has been the bill's central selling point for years.
The president has repeatedly urged Congress to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, and he seized on Monday's committee vote to press the case again. In a written statement, Trump cast the issue as both common sense and good politics:
"It's time that people can stop worrying about the 'Clock,' not to mention all of the work and money that is spent on this ridiculous, twice-yearly production. It will also be a very nice WIN for the Republican Party. Take it! We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day, And who can be against that, This is an easy one!"
Trump has also argued that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year by people, cities, and states adjusting to the change. The Washington Examiner reported that the president pledged to "work very hard" to see the bill signed into law, and an AP-NORC poll found only 12 percent of Americans favor the current clock-changing system, while 47 percent oppose it outright.
For a Republican majority racing against a shrinking legislative calendar, a broadly popular bill with bipartisan support looks like low-hanging fruit, if leadership can get it across the finish line.
Not everyone is sold. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) proposed an amendment during Monday's Rules Committee session that would have replaced the bill's language with her own "Sunshine for Our Kids Act," which takes the opposite approach: making standard time permanent nationwide. The committee rejected her amendment.
Scanlon and other opponents argue that permanent Daylight Saving Time would leave more Americans, especially children heading to school, in darkness during winter morning hours. They point to the nation's last experiment with the idea. In 1974, Congress tried year-round Daylight Saving Time and abandoned it after widespread public backlash over those exact concerns.
Several unnamed medical organizations have also weighed in against the bill, arguing that permanent standard time aligns more closely with the body's natural circadian rhythms. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has voiced similar objections. Breitbart reported Cotton's warning that "permanent Daylight Savings Time would push winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of morning sunshine that's essential for our safety and well-being."
That kind of Republican-on-Republican friction matters more in the Senate, where the bill needs 60 votes to clear the filibuster. The chamber unanimously passed a version of the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022, but that measure died when the House failed to act. Whether the same unanimity exists today, with Cotton and potentially others opposed, is an open question.
The sharpest internal criticism came from Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a member of the House Freedom Caucus. Self wrote Monday that "Republicans are majoring in the minors, fiddling with the clocks while the country burns."
It is a fair point about priorities, even if the bill itself is popular. The House has already passed versions of the SAVE America Act multiple times, but that measure has struggled to overcome the Senate's legislative filibuster. Freedom Caucus members and other conservatives have argued that GOP leadership should spend its limited floor time on the president's core agenda, border security, spending reform, tax policy, rather than clock adjustments.
Buchanan, the bill's author, has pushed back on that framing. In a May news release, he made the case that the measure is itself a commonsense priority:
"Floridians and Americans across the country are tired of the biannual time change, and the evidence is clear that permanent daylight saving time can improve public health, reduce traffic accidents, lower crime and encourage more outdoor activity. Ending the clock change is a commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions of Americans."
The bill also has bipartisan backing that most Republican priorities lack. Just The News reported that ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) supports the legislation, telling colleagues, "The real question is, why do we still change our clocks? It's getting harder and harder to justify." The House measure carries 32 bipartisan cosponsors, while the Senate companion bill has 18. Sen. Rick Scott has said he looks forward to "FINALLY passing my Sunshine Protection Act out of the Senate."
Industry groups have lined up behind it too. Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association, told lawmakers that "our industry is uniquely tied to daylight, and the number of playable hours directly affects the number of rounds we can offer, the staff we employ, and the revenue we generate."
The floor vote in the House appears likely to succeed, given the bill's 48-1 committee margin and bipartisan cosponsor list. The real test is the upper chamber. The 60-vote threshold means at least a handful of Democrats would need to join Republicans, or the bill would need to be attached to a larger package that can move through reconciliation or another procedural vehicle.
The 2022 precedent cuts both ways. The Senate passed the bill unanimously that year, suggesting the votes exist in principle. But that vote happened quickly and caught some senators off guard; several later said they would have objected had they realized what was happening. Cotton's public opposition this time around signals that any repeat will face more scrutiny.
Trump's active involvement could change the calculus. A president willing to spend political capital on a bill, even a relatively minor one, tends to concentrate minds in his own caucus. And with Trump's influence over Republican primary voters well established, few senators want to be on the wrong side of a presidential priority that polls well with the base.
The Sunshine Protection Act now heads to the full House floor for debate and a vote. No precise date has been announced. If it passes, it moves to a Senate that has proven willing to pass the concept before but may not be willing to do so again without changes.
The opt-out mechanism, allowing states to stick with standard time if they choose, is designed to defuse objections from northern states where winter mornings would stay dark past 8 a.m. under permanent Daylight Saving Time. Whether that flexibility satisfies Cotton and other skeptics remains to be seen.
For the roughly 20 states that have already passed their own permanent-DST laws, the federal bill is the final piece. Without congressional authorization, those state laws sit dormant, passed but unenforceable. Voters in those states have already spoken. They are waiting on Washington to follow through on the legislative path their own representatives laid out.
Ending the clock change is not the most consequential item on the Republican agenda. But it may be the most popular. And in a Congress that struggles to agree on much of anything, a bill that 88 percent of Americans can live with ought to be the kind of thing that actually gets done.
