We’re less than a month away from the annual ritual of changing the clocks and moving to daylight saving time. That “fall back, spring forward” ritual could end if President Donald Trump gets his way.

Daylight saving time officially begins Sunday, March 9 at 2 a.m. when we move the clocks ahead by one hour and shift more daylight into the evening and away from the morning. We will stay on that schedule until Nov. 2 when we “fall back” to standard time and set the clocks back.

DST currently starts the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

President not a time change fan

Trump has said he wants to do away with 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 in a Truth Social post from late 2024. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

There is legislative support for doing away with the time change but in a different way than the president expressed. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, recently reintroduced the bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act that would make DST permanent year round. Earlier efforts to establish permanent DST passed the Senate but did not receive House approval, effectively killing the bill.

According to the Uniform Time Act of 1966, states are allowed to stay on standard time year-round – something done in Hawaii and Arizona – but are not able to permanently establish DST, meaning Congress would have to change the law. Nineteen states, including Alabama, have already passed legislation to do away with the time change, pending Congressional approval.

Scott called the time-change practice “an unnecessary, decades-old practice that’s more of an annoyance to families than benefit to them.” The bill is backed by Alabama Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt.

Daylight Saving Time was first introduced in the U.S. in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson as an energy-saving measure during World War I. It was reintroduced during World War II but until 1966, different states observed the time change at various times. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 set a unified national schedule for DST to start last Sunday of April and end the last Sunday of October. That was changed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which set the current DST schedule.