President-elect Donald Trump issued a brief statement saying that Republicans would work to end Daylight Saving Time.
DST was proposed by Ben Franklin in 1784 as a way to increase productivity by allowing people more time to sleep when it is dark. The policy was adopted in 1918 in the U.S., but many states refuse to participate, including Arizona, Hawaii, and the territory of Puerto Rico.
‘Daylight Saving Time … has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!’
Trump offered an explanation why he believes ending DST is in Americans’ interests.
“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,” he wrote on social media.
Rep. Eli Crane (R) of Arizona, an anti-DST state, praised the idea.
“President Trump is right. The rest of the country should follow Arizona’s lead. Let’s get this done,” he said on social media.
Others have argued that the ideal would be to stay on DST and abolish standard time so that no one has to change clocks between the two twice a year. A 2024 poll found that a majority of Americans want to make DST permanent, but one study found that making standard time permanent could help prevent hundreds, if not thousands, of suicides per year.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas sided with the pro-standard-time people.
“Congress once made Daylight Saving Time permanent,” he posted. “It was so unpopular that Congress repealed it less than a year later. The only sensible and durable way to stop the biannual time change is to make Standard Time permanent. I will work on this issue with @realDonaldTrump.”
In 2022 CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard argued that DST was racist because it disproportionately affected minorities by not allowing them to sleep and leading to worse health outcomes somehow.
“Essentially anything that produces physical and psychological stress is a threat to sleep health, and these stressors tend to be more prevalent in black communities,” Howard wrote. “It is believed that discriminatory policies and practices across sectors of society create the physical and social conditions that make it more difficult for Black families to get optimal sleep and grow up healthy.”
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