Daylight saving time has dodged the wrath of President Donald Trump — for now.
As Americans again participate in the twice-yearly ritual of fiddling with their clocks — this time rolling back an hour on Sunday morning — Congress has fallen short of tackling the issue in time.
Earlier this year, the House passed legislation that would allow states to voluntarily observe daylight saving time year-round. But progress on the legislation has ground to a halt in the Senate, even though it’s a popular issue with voters and Trump.
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But it’s not for lack of trying. Trump has routinely pressured the upper chamber to pass the bill and re-upped that call earlier this week in the midst of traveling across the country to rally in key states and safe red bastions to urge voters to keep Republicans in power.
“The United States Senate is letting the daylight saving bill die when a vast Majority of the Country want it,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Most people are demanding light in the evening, but ALL want not to change their clocks anymore. TAKE A VOTE!”
Trump wants the Senate to pass, or at least take a vote on, the Sunshine Protection Act, but it’s facing heavy headwinds from a broad swathe of lawmakers in the upper chamber on both sides of the aisle.
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His pressure campaign got to the point that he shared the cellphone number of one of his top allies, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., one of the more vocal opponents of the bill, urging supporters to call the lawmaker and demand he work on passing the bill.
“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Saving Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton said in response. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”
The House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act along bipartisan lines in July. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans voted in favor of the bill, which passed 307 to 117. Just 22 Republicans and 95 Democrats opposed it.
But it’s one of several pieces of legislation that House lawmakers complain has fallen by the wayside in the upper chamber. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., pressed the Senate to take up that bill in comments to Fox News Digital back in early October.
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Scalise told Fox News Digital, “There’s no reason Americans should lose an hour of sunlight at the end of the day when more daylight means more time with our families, more activity for our businesses and safer communities.”
“President Trump has been pushing to make daylight saving time permanent, and House Republicans delivered by overwhelmingly passing the Sunshine Protection Act. It’s a commonsense change and the Senate should take it up,” Scalise said.
And when the Senate returns after the election, lawmakers will have a densely packed schedule crammed with leftover legislation. With floor time being the top commodity in the upper chamber, squeezing the Sunshine Protection Act onto the floor may be a challenge, even without the resistance it already faces.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters earlier this month. “It’s something we’re having conversations about, but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”