Pirate's Cove

Tom Cotton seems to be one of the few who gets that permanent DST is a bad idea

Battle over daylight saving time erupts as push to stop changing clocks hits Senate wall

The battle over Americans’ clocks reemerged in an unlikely way over the weekend, with President Donald Trump picking a fight with one of his top allies over the issue.

There have been many fights in Congress over the nearly two years that Trump has been in office for his second term that either ended in partisan victory or gloriously fizzled out, but one has quietly gone onto the shelf despite his pressure on Republicans to do something about it.

And that fight is over allowing states to voluntarily observe daylight saving time year-round to effectively do away with the twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks. It’s a popular issue with voters and the president, and there’s a bill that passed the House this summer to enact the change. But it’s a policy issue that has divided both sides of the aisle and ground to a halt in the upper chamber.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has been one of the more vocal opponents of the bill, vowing to block any attempts to fast-track it on the floor. That resistance earned him a Truth Social post from Trump, who over the weekend shared his personal phone number in a bid to pressure the lawmaker to change his stance on daylight saving time.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump said. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

Most polls give a slight edge towards DST over Standard Time, like this one

Only 12% favor the current system of changing the clocks twice a year. Fifty-six percent prefer daylight saving time all year and 42% prefer standard time.

The US has been doing the time switch for 60 years: I’d say that most people were born into it, it’s no big deal, and just like hating on Mondays it’s just something to whine about. They’ll complain for a week, at most, after the twice yearly switches, and move on.

Cotton responded, noting that Congress has tackled daylight saving time before, only to roll back the change shortly after.

“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changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Saving Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton said on X. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

Apparently the western states do not care for Standard Time, so, let them stay on DST if they want. Hawaii and most of Arizona do not switch to DST.

“Every year, more Americans grow more frustrated setting their clocks back and forth, and every winter folks in Washington state despair at the prospect of losing an hour of precious sunlight when we are forced off Daylight Saving Time,” Murray said in a statement at the time.

Um, despair? She does know that the Earth revolves the same in Washington state the same as everywhere else, right? It is above all East coast states except the top tip of Maine, so, it does get less light in the winter. Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and a goodly chunk of Idaho are in the same boat. Alaska is so far north they don’t care either way. If they want to do DST let them.

The more south you go the less need there is to switch from Standard time. So, again, if we are going to make either permanent, make it Standard Time, while allowing states to choose if they want to switch to DST during some months. A typical 56% DST to 42% Standard Time polling isn’t “almost everyone”, and, once people start getting educated they tend to flip towards Standard Time.