Can Trump move the clocks?

It is a dark time in America. Not metaphorically. Despite what one may see in their curated social media feed, much of America seems somewhat content. The economy is in a better position than at any time since COVID struck, the peaceful transition of power is functioning smoothly, and the country is largely satisfied with its incoming president and his advisers.

But it is quite literally dark. In the city around which the sun revolves, New York, the sun will set at or before 4:30 for the final time this weekend. After that, the sunset will begin its long march backwards, culminating in the “spring forward” of daylight saving come March. That is, unless there is a significant change to America’s clocks between now and then.

Talk of changing the country’s seasonal time system has steadily risen in recent weeks after President-elect Trump endorsed the idea in a social media post. The details of a change are hazy but Trump’s backing carries real weight, reigniting a long-running debate among states, scientists, and experts, and prompting a larger question about his second term.

Congress’s involvement in America’s timekeeping first appeared on Americans’ collective radar back in 2022, when the Senate stunned journalists, observers, and many of its own members by passing a bill to establish permanent daylight saving by unanimous consent. That passage was a fluke, achieved via parliamentary luck and the absence of most members (advocates will also soon lose the bill’s longtime champion, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is set to head to the State Department). But it helped raise awareness of a long-simmering debate around the benefits of daylight saving and standard time, which the U.S. has been switching between since 1974. 

Now, lawmakers from both parties see an opportunity. They do not always agree on the endpoint, however. 

On one side are those backing permanent standard time, which would result in the sun rising and setting earlier in the day, bringing lighter mornings and darker evenings. Scientists and sleep experts generally support permanent standard time, arguing it is closer to the natural course of the sun’s movement and humans’ circadian rhythm and that a closer harmony between the two could bring about positive health outcomes. (Two states, Arizona and Hawaii, are permanently on standard time.)

On the other side are those who support making daylight saving permanent, which would result in the sun both rising and setting later in the day, meaning darker mornings and lighter evenings. Sunnier states like Florida are often the biggest supporters of this system. Advocates argue it would reduce the dysfunction and seasonal depression that studies have associated with the annual change to the clocks (one study found the switch costs the economy $400M in lost productivity each year).

The nuances are likely lost on the president-elect, who is widely known to be disinterested in the complexities of policy making; as the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman wrote this week, Trump’s press conference on Monday showed he was “more specific, and in some ways more well versed, in the status of his various lawsuits against journalists and the Pulitzer Prize board than he was in some aspects of how he plans to address Syria after the fall of the Assad regime.”

But even more-informed lawmakers have sometimes been confused. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an advocate of permanent standard time, exclaimed her excitement while presiding over the Senate passage of permanent daylight saving time in 2022. Sen. Ted Cruz initially responded to Trump’s social media post by promising to make a change to the clocks “a priority” — before admitting this week he was unsure which change Trump was calling for.

An actual change to the country’s time system is still a huge long shot. Not only will Republicans have far bigger legislative priorities but their slim House majority will make it exceedingly difficult to move even small pieces of legislation. Most of all, the bipartisan support for ending the current system has a corollary — bipartisan opposition, largely clustered among representatives from states that would stand to lose the most, like those in the most western part of each time zone (where the sun already rises the latest).

Beyond the ramifications of the change itself, the topic of daylight saving points to a broader, more interesting question for Trump’s second term: how far from the establishment he will dare to go.

Trump took office in 2017 amid widespread uncertainty of just how unconventional a president he would seek to be. His first term did indeed break a number of conventions — from his interference in civil servants’ duties to the steady stream of firings and inflammatory statements to the effort to overturn the 2020 election. But in some ways the most remarkable thing about his first four years was how unremarkable they were: no D.C.-induced recession, no new wars, no mass release of state secrets, no break from GOP orthodoxy on tax or social policy.

Now, Trump enters office with far more flexibility and a far different victory than 2016. Many of the same issues on which he either backed down or hit a wall the first time around will present themselves again. Running in 2016, he had promised to release the JFK files, only to backtrack while in office. This year, he made the same promise — and will have far wider latitude to follow through. Despite riding a wave of anger at American foreign policy misadventures in his first campaign, he ended up doubling down on core tenets of the foreign policy establishment, significantly expanding the drone war and the Pentagon budget while civilian deaths in Middle Eastern countries skyrocketed. Now, he will have the opportunity to curtail military involvement and funding for multiple conflicts, including Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Despite what histrionic liberals or trolling conservatives may claim, Trump will be gone after these four years. How he chooses to spend them is still unclear. But as the events of this week demonstrated — an appropriations bill negotiated and backed by GOP leadership swiftly collapsed after opposition from Trump and Elon Musk, leaving the basic functions of the federal government in doubt — deep fissures exist within the GOP that can’t be easily remedied. If that continues, it may be lights out for bigger ambitions like daylight saving. 

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