Feb. 28, 2026, 6:02 a.m. ET
In just over a week, most Americans will set their clocks an hour forward, welcoming daylight saving time once again. Some people in the United States have pushed for daylight saving time to become a permanent fixture, including President Donald Trump.
During Trump’s first term, in March 2019, he shared on social media that he fully supported making daylight saving time permanent. In another post in 2024, Trump said he supports eliminating the time change.
“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t,” Trump wrote on X in December 2024. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”
Most recently, U.S. citizens have started to wonder whether Trump will follow through and try to eliminate the time change.
Here’s what we know about Trump, daylight saving time and whether he will – or can – change it.
Daylight saving time has been a federal law for over 100 years
Daylight saving time requires Americans in most states and territories to set their clocks forward one hour on the second Sunday of March, and back one hour on the first Sunday of November, per the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
These clock adjustments create more sunlit hours in the evening during months when the weather is the warmest, the institute said.
Daylight saving time first became a federal law in March 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Standard Time Act. It was initially introduced to conserve fuel during World War I, per the U.S. Department of War.
Daylight saving time as we know it today, in which clocks are adjusted twice during the year, was signed into law in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Known as the Uniform Time Act of 1966, only Congress or the Secretary of Transportation can change this.
Politicians have tried in recent years to change the law, including through the Sunshine Protection Act, a bill proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, introduced in 2018. The bill was a push to amend the Uniform Time Act of 1966, and it would make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time. The bill has been reintroduced multiple times since then.
There’s also the Daylight Act of 2026, which would change the 1918 law and “permanently adjust American time,” per the legislation. Introduced by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Florida, in early February, the bill would move the U.S. time zones forward 30 minutes and leave them there permanently.
Trump’s wavering opinion on daylight saving time
After Trump voiced support for eliminating daylight saving time in 2019, he later appeared hesitant to back the change. In March 2025, when asked when he’d get rid of daylight saving time, Trump called DST a “50-50 issue.”
“If something’s a 50-50 issue, it’s hard to get excited about it,” Trump said at the time. “I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier, because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark … It’s something I can do but a lot of people like it one way, and a lot of people like it the other way.”
In April 2025, Trump encouraged the House and Senate on Twitter to “push hard for more daylight at the end of a day.”
“Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT,” Trump wrote.
Politicians working toward eliminating the twice-a-year time changes have cited Trump as a supporter, including U.S. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Rick Scott, R-Florida. The pair reintroduced the bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act in January 2025.
At the time, Scott expressed excitement “to have President Trump back in the White House and fully on board to LOCK THE CLOCK.”
Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, Mary Walrath-Holdridge, USA TODAY
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Email her at sdmartin@usatoday.com.
