The day after a midterm drubbing for the G.O.P., President Trump took to social media to complain — about turning back the clocks.
“It’s so dark outside, so early,” he posted on Truth Social. He went on to lament the lack of action taken by the Senate on the Sunshine Protection Act, which would lock most of the nation’s clocks on daylight saving time year-round.
“I will keep fighting for this!” he wrote.
Scientists aren’t particularly keen on permanent daylight saving time, fearing more injuries in the early-morning darkness and the health consequences of disturbed body clocks. But the president is an ardent supporter. One possible reason: golf.
“Trump is not hiding the fact that golf is definitely on his mind,” said Jay Pea, the founder of Save Standard Time, which advocates adopting year-round standard time.
The Sunshine Protection Act was passed by the House in July. The Senate has yet to put the bill to a vote this year, though lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene next week.
If the Senate were to pass the measure before the holiday recess, and the president were to sign it into law, most clocks in the country could suddenly spring forward. In many places, the move would push sunrise to after 9 a.m. for several weeks in late fall and winter.
Mr. Trump hasn’t always seemed convinced about what to do with our clocks, apart from being determined to end the biannual changes. His December 2024 vow on X that the Republican Party would use “its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time” could be read as a call for permanent standard time.
In March 2025, he seemed to be losing interest, stating that “it’s a 50-50 issue.” That changed the next month, though. Shortly after Jay Karen, the chief executive of the National Golf Course Owners Association, testified before the Senate committee in support of the Sunshine Protection Act, Trump posted his endorsement of “more Daylight at the end of a day.”
The president’s golf empire includes at least 14 properties, which Forbes has valued at more than $1 billion. Mr. Trump is said to have golfed more than one out of every five days of his presidency.
Mr. Trump’s home state is also Florida, which is widely considered the top state for golf. Its politicians — namely Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rick Scott, and Representative Vern Buchanan — have championed permanent daylight saving time for years.
The golf industry’s push actually goes back decades. In 1985, a coalition of recreation businesses testified before a House subcommittee in favor of extending the weeks that the nation observes the seasonal reallocation of daylight hours, leading to later sunrises and sunsets.
“If a side is going to be chosen, if we lock the clock, we heavily favor daylight saving time being permanent,” Mr. Karen said in an interview. “Twice the number of Americans recreate in the last half of day versus the first half.”
The White House declined to comment and pointed to Mr. Trump’s recent Truth Social post.
In early October, after the Senate went on recess, Mr. Trump initiated a back-and-forth on social media with Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, who opposes the Sunshine Protection Act. The president wrote that Mr. Cotton was “holding up a very important Bill” and shared the senator’s cellphone number.
Both of his posts included a letter from Brian Rolapp, the chief executive of the PGA Tour, which estimated that permanent daylight saving time would lead to 23 million additional rounds of golf and $1 billion more in revenue.
“Few people have done more to grow the game of golf than you have, Mr. President, and we are grateful for your leadership on this issue,” Mr. Rolapp wrote. “It will make a real difference for a lot of people who love golf the same way you do.”
Mr. Cotton is not one of those people. From the Senate floor, he recapitulated many of the scientific arguments against darker mornings, including the disruption of circadian rhythms and the risks of children going to school in the dark.
The senator pointed to the last time the nation experimented with permanent daylight saving time. That law took effect in early January 1974, during the darkest part of the year.
“While briefly popular, it proved deeply unpopular when reality set in,” he said. “Congress beat a hasty retreat.”
In his speech, Mr. Cotton also stated that he would “always oppose any effort to adopt daylight savings time year-round.”
A study published last week estimated there would be more than two billion additional dark-morning school commutes with the adoption of permanent daylight saving time.
“Most politicians, including our own president, have not done their homework to really see the disadvantages of one time versus the other,” said Horacio de la Iglesia, a coauthor on the study and a biologist at the University of Washington.
Even some golf course owners have expressed opposition, though far less than the two-thirds of owners who Mr. Karen said support permanent daylight saving time.
Mr. Trump seemed to be nudging Mr. Cotton again about the bill the day after the senator won re-election: “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this prior to the Election because I didn’t want to have certain Senators lose their Race, in a landslide, but it is too bad they can’t get it done,” he wrote on Truth Social.
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