The US House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act
FOX News Chief Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram discusses the latest updates to the Sunshine Protection Act, which aims to make daylight saving time permanent by eliminating the need to change clocks twice a year.
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President Donald Trump wants Congress to pass legislation that would give Americans a break from twice-a-year troubles, but the sun is likely to set on the Senate, where the problem runs deeper than politics.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a bill, the Sunshine Protection Act, allowing states to voluntarily observe daylight saving time year-round, but the legislation is hitting a brick wall in the Senate.
And the debate is not defined by party lines, but by the horizontal line that runs across the United States and divides the northern and southern states.
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President Donald Trump wants to make daylight saving time permanent, but a geographic coalition of northern and southern states is locked in heated debate over the merits of the change, spelling doom for the bill. (Evan Vucci-Poole/Getty Images; Daniel Hoyer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“This is an issue on which there are passionate views on both sides,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said of whether the Senate will take up the bill.
“So we’ll see,” he continued. “I mean, the House has passed the decision now, and we’ll see what the level of interest is in the Senate. But I know there are people who are willing to really slow things down on this issue.”
Supporters argue it is inconvenient in their states and they need more daylight in the evenings, while opponents say it would force school-age children into darkness early in the day.
One of the law’s most vocal opponents is one of Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who said last year that he would “always oppose” efforts to make daylight saving time permanent.
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A source in Cotton’s circle told Fox News Digital that the lawmaker was “far from the only one who objected” to the bill, and noted that the law is more of a grandfather clause that requires states to have already adopted compliance with constant standard time before the Sunshine Protection Act becomes law.
Hawaii and Arizona are the only two states that observe constant standard time by law, while no state observes constant daylight saving time. This is not the only attempt by Congress.
“Congress has already tried to make daylight saving time permanent,” the source said. “He was so hated that Congress changed course the next year, but almost no one knows about it.”
In the 1970s, lawmakers introduced year-round daylight saving time. But Americans quickly became disillusioned with the changes, especially parents whose children had to wait in the dark for the school bus. About a year later it was cancelled.
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Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, rides on the Senate subway during the vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., March 14, 2025. (Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I cannot support the Daylight Saving Time proposal because it means children in South Dakota go to school in the dark for about the first hour of school for more than six months of the year,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. “That’s why we can’t do it.”
Supporters, however, argue that these are long-overdue changes.
Senator James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who originally introduced the Sunshine Protection Act with then-Sen. Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said a decade ago that the move was “not a matter of partisanship, but a matter of preference,” which often centered on geographic boundaries.
However, he acknowledged resistance from parents concerned about their children going to school in the dark.
“This is a leftover from World War I, when America was trying to save lamp oil. We’re fine with lamp oil now, so that’s not the problem,” Lankford said. “With the street lights and the different wattages and everything, we’re in a completely different situation. And I talk to a lot of people who say they’re just tired of changing time. They want to be able to lock their watches.”
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And Sen. Rick Scott, the Florida Republican who introduced the bill last year, supported House passage of the bill.
“It’s one of the most popular things in my state,” Scott said. “You wouldn’t believe how often I get asked this.”
However, he acknowledged the resistance coming from the North. He argued that he could not understand how “anyone could vote against it when the state could make its own decision.”
“Give me a chance — I mean, look, in my condition, we want to do this,” Scott said.
Alex Miller is a Fox News Digital correspondent covering the U.S. Senate.