Trump seems to prefer permanent daylight saving time, while RFK Jr. wants standard time ... but is too cowardly to say so.
It sure sounds like Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are on opposite sides of the"Standard Time vs. Permanent DST" debate.Even in our ultra-divided, ultra-partisan timeline, there are a few things that the vast majority of Americans agree on.
We collectively hate, for instance, the twice-yearly task of setting our clocks forward or back in accordance with the practice of daylight saving time. If you poll Americans on whether they’re “in favor of daylight saving time,” they’ll unequivocallyas you should no doubt expect of anything perceived by the public as an inconvenience. As a result, you’ll find that the idea of “abolishing daylight saving time” is generally quite popular … but then the concept completely falls apart when it comes time to decide how the alternative would work. Turns out, you then need to decide if you favor permanent standard time or permanent DST , and that’s a topic so contentious that it’s tough to even get through explaining the question online before you’re deafened by the angry opinions of parents, doctors, sports enthusiasts and activists. Oh, and it seems to be yet another topic where President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement are completely at odds with each other. In the United States, the concept of daylight saving time was utilized sporadically and confusingly as a wartime measure until it was codified by Congress in the Uniform Time Act in 1966, creating the twice-a-year changing of the clocks that Americans are familiar with. It begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday in November, accentuating the amount of evening daylight in the spring, summer and autumn, before reverting to standard time from November to March. It also provokes a lot of arguments, with Americans dividing into camps over whether we would be better off with permanent DST or standard time, positions that tend to be influenced by factors like geography and socioeconomic status.tried national permanent DST in the past, albeit briefly. In the winter of 1973, amidst the ongoing oil crisis, the administration of President Richard Nixon signed a bill into law that made daylight saving time permanent, resulting in more evening sunlight in the winter, but darker mornings. The legislation was initially popular, but public sentimentparticularly inflamed by news reports about traffic fatalities involving children walking to school. It didn’t matter that the numbers of accidents and deaths didn’t change in a statistically significant way from the year before; what mattered was the narrative … and the fact that actual energy savings were fairly minimal. Less than a year after it was signed into law, President Gerald Ford signed a bill to return the U.S. back to the twice-yearly clock changes, which is where we’ve been ever since. Standard time proponents still play up the “safety” angle as a major selling point. Standard Time keeps mornings naturally sunlit, for health and safety. Permanent Daylight Saving Time would force us to wake hours before sunrise, to start work/school in cold darkness. Tell lawmakers to ditch DST with permanent Standard Time! 🔗👇Donald Trump, however, wants this to change. And a huge chunk of his supporters might be pretty pissed off about what he wants to do.Donald Trump has long lobbied for the vague idea of “ending” daylight saving time, but that statement doesn’t mean much without an explanation of whether you believe that permanent standard time or permanent DST is preferable. And in the case of Trump, there’s reason to believe that he mostly just wants to choose whichever option he thinks is more popular with the public. Determining the answer to that question, however, is harder than one might expect, because polling seems to be all over the place on the issue, and it’s difficult to accept any poll without understanding how the potentially confusing questions have been phrased. An American saying they want to “end DST,” for instance, can’t simply be interpreted as a vote in favor of standard time, as many of those responding may just be indicating that they want to stop changing the clocks twice per year. Perhaps as a result of this confusion, you can find recent representative survey results that suggest that AmericansSurprise, surprise: People’s opinions on the subject change vastly if you phrase a question as “Do you want dark mornings?” or “do you want to lose daylight on summer evenings?” This makes public sentiment on the subject quite difficult to sum up, but on a state level it really seems like permanent DST is preferred. Numerous statesin favor of permanent DST, including places as far apart as Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Ironically, however, these states are not actually allowed to implement permanent DST without the help of the U.S. Congress, which has led to all the states that passed this legislation simply waiting for a national bill on the subject to finally make it through both chambers. The states, meanwhile,allowed to opt in to permanent standard time, but the only ones that have done so are Hawaii and Arizona, the latter citing the So with that said, there were a lot of questions about what side of this issue Trump was going to ultimately favor. He seemingly put those questions to bed this past spring There are any number of reasons why Trump may have decided to go this route. Economic analysis, for one, has drawn connections between more hours of evening, after-work-hours sun and increased leisure spending, which is an economic incentive. Some parents support it, citing a greater ability to get out and do physical activities with children outside in the evening hours. There has been significant bipartisan support for the idea in Congress, with the likes of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in favor of their own permanent DST legislation, which ultimately passed the Senate but died in the U.S. House of Representatives.and told them that losing DST would cost the golf industry an estimated $1.6 billion, while making it permanent could result in $1 billion in additional revenue. Sunlight bigger business than you’d think, and you can reliably assume that Donald Trump will be on whichever side has billionaires looking for validation.Donald Trump deciding to champion permanent daylight saving time, and instructing Congress to work on passing a law in favor of it, isn’t the kind of issue you would likely expect to drive a wedge through his supporters. But it turns out that much of Trump’s base isagainst Trump’s position, and angry at him for abandoning yet another tenet of the Make America Healthy Again philosophy. People who identify as MAHA supporters are instead seemingly universally in favor of a national return to standard time, a position they support with everything from the testimony of actual doctors and researchers, to a bizarre mix of alternative medicine and Christian nationalism. They’re desperately hoping that the MAHA movement’s anointed leader, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., will champion a return to standard time, even as it looks more and more likely that he’llin the premise that standard time is more or less the Earth’s natural state of being, and is thus associated with better health outcomes and less chronic illness. There’s actually plenty of data potentially in support of this view,that earlier sunlight and earlier darkness are associated with more balanced production of melatonin in the body, which helps to regulate our sleep cycles. Gains in how well our circadian rhythm works, meanwhile, could contribute positively to everything from blood pressure and heart rate to cortisol levels in U.S. residents. Of course, this being a movement connected to Donald Trump in some way, its proponents often don’t stop at a purely medical argument, and instead characterize standard time as a valorous position fighting the evil forces of permanent DST. I love this Twitter poll, which labels standard time as “God’s Time” and DST as “Fake Time,” when asking people which they prefer. Wow, so objective! These members of MAHA and the greater MAGA world see permanent DST as a result as something for “elites,” for those asshole country club rich folks to enjoy while their kids are forced to wake up in the dark. This makes them rub up, of course, against the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance that Donald Trump is exactly like the greedy senior golfer elites they’ve defined as their enemy in AI-generated, anti-DST memes like the ones below. This has led the MAHA movement’s vast army of influencers and grifters, particularly on Twitter, to directly beseech RFK Jr. to speak out in favor of a move to permanent standard time, hoping to change Trump’s position. And indeed, given standard time’s “natural” credo and its support from doctors, it’s the position that one would expect him to have as the leader of MAHA. Even. Although he’s made plenty of vague statements about “natural” living and natural cycles, I cannot find a single actual quote that the man has given about the standard time vs. permanent DST debate. This can’t help but rankle the MAHA faithful, many of whom already feelas he has frequently gotten in bed with corporations and the pharmaceutical industry, even before something like his flip-flopping on the herbicide glyphosate. His position on “God’s time” appears to be just the latest thing where he’s preparing to stab them in the back, in order for the HHS secretary to be able to avoid disagreeing with Trump on literally anything. It’s distinctly sad to watch the MAHA faithful plead with him to take what should obviously be his position on Twitter, to zero response.which obsessively lobbies for the ending of daylight saving time on both Capitol Hill and across Twitter, where its posts are amplified by many MAHA disciples. You canin which Pea bemoans that RFK Jr. won’t pay attention to him, and Donald Trump only cares about golf. “We need to try to get him to see that golf will still happen with standard time,” Pea said. “And if we want to make Americans healthy again, we need standard time. We just haven’t gotten through yet to the people at the top of the MAHA . I’m hopeful to turn their heads soon.” I wouldn’t count on it, Jay. You’re asking RFK Jr. to publicly disagree with Donald Trump, even on something relatively minor, and that’s something that Kennedy has explicitly made clear that he refuses to do. Like any proper lackey, his opinions are malleable, and they conform to whatever the boss and benefactor says. The question is how long the pissed-off thought leaders of the MAHA world, beyond Kennedy, will continue to lie to themselves on the question of whether Trump and RFK Jr. have any actual interest in “making American healthy.”system of putting the clocks forward and back, inconvenient as it may be, might still represent the best compromise available to the country as a whole. Given the size of our nation, and the fact that states like Maine or Arizona have relatively little in common, it’s only natural that people in one place would probably ultimately conclude that they want different systems from each other. No attempt at a grand, unifying plan has managed to gain any traction–not even this year’s particularly absurd Daylight Act of 2026, from Republican Florida congressman Greg Steube, which would move all the nation’s clocks forwardbefore never touching them again. Truly an inspiringly overcomplicated compromise there, which would put the U.S. in a different 30-minute timeslot from the entire rest of the planet.Happy Year of the Fire Horse! Baby Girls Born This Year Are Destined to Defy Societal Norms & Ruin Men
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