Sunshine Protection Act Clears House Rules Committee, Heads to Floor Vote

The House Rules Committee voted 6-4 on Monday, July 13, to advance the Sunshine Protection Act to a full floor vote, according to Fox News. That clears the last procedural hurdle before the full chamber weighs in on a bill that would let states make Daylight Saving Time permanent year-round.

The bill is expected to come up for a vote sometime during the week of July 13, according to WRAL. It builds on momentum from May, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee folded the measure into a broader transportation package and passed it 48-1, a lopsided margin TIME and Fox News both flagged as evidence of real bipartisan appetite.

Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., who authored the current House version, has been pushing this for years. "Floridians and Americans across the country are tired of the biannual time change, and the evidence is clear that permanent daylight saving time can improve public health, reduce traffic accidents, lower crime and encourage more outdoor activity," Buchanan said, according to Fox News.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., made a similar pitch in his opening statement Monday: "Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of this policy and want to end the practice of 'springing forward' and 'falling back.' Locking the clock all year long would have positive impacts on sleep schedules, energy conservation, motor vehicle safety, and our economy."

Trump has repeatedly urged Congress to act, calling the twice-yearly switch "this ridiculous, twice yearly production" in a Truth Social post after the May committee vote, cited by both Fox News and TIME. He framed it as a political winner too: "It will also be a very nice WIN for the Republican Party. Take it!"

But FactCheck.org pushed back hard on one specific Trump claim: that cities and states spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on labor and equipment to physically change clocks in towers. FactCheck.org reported it could find no credible analysis backing that figure, and quoted David Prerau, author of "Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time," who said in decades of research on the subject nobody has raised that specific cost. Prerau said there may be some cost to changing municipal tower clocks, but called it "negligible in the larger scheme of the topic."

FactCheck.org did note a real economic estimate exists, just not the one Trump cited. An Independent Institute calculation, later updated by the American Enterprise Institute in 2013, put the opportunity cost of the twice-yearly switch at roughly $2 billion a year, based on lost wages from the 10 minutes people supposedly spend resetting clocks. FactCheck.org pointed out that estimate is dated, since most digital clocks now change automatically, undercutting the lost-time assumption entirely.

Polling backs up the idea that Americans are sick of the switch. An October 2025 AP-NORC poll found nearly half of Americans oppose the biannual change, with only 12% in favor, according to TIME. A YouGov survey from earlier this year found roughly two-thirds want it abolished.

Where people split is on the replacement. AP-NORC found 56% prefer permanent Daylight Saving Time (darker mornings, brighter evenings) versus 42% who want permanent standard time. YouGov's numbers leaned more toward Daylight Saving Time and later sunsets, per TIME.

Sleep scientists are the ones raising the disagreement loudest. WRAL reported that if the Sunshine Protection Act passes, sunrise in Raleigh could come as late as 8:33 a.m. in the depths of winter, with sunset around 6 p.m. Sleep experts cited by WRAL have mixed views: they want the clock-switching to stop, but many worry permanent Daylight Saving Time means kids walking to school in the dark for months at a time, a genuine child-safety tradeoff that deserves a fair hearing.

WRAL noted the U.S. already ran this experiment. Richard Nixon signed permanent Daylight Saving Time into law in 1974 during the energy crisis. It was popular at first, but after a rise in children being struck by cars in dark morning commutes, schools delayed start times and Congress reversed course by October of that year, less than 12 months in.

Nineteen states have already passed laws to adopt permanent Daylight Saving Time, WRAL reported, but none can implement them until Congress amends the 1966 Uniform Time Act, which is exactly what this bill does. A dozen more states, including North Carolina, have considered similar legislation.

The current bill includes an opt-out for states that want to stick with standard time, addressing part of the 1974 failure. If the House passes it this week, it heads to the Senate, where a similar measure passed back in 2022 only to die in the House. Whether that history repeats, or whether Trump's public pressure campaign finally breaks the logjam, is still an open question.