It was just past midnight when President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to complain about sunlight.
“Republicans in the Senate have to get moving on what I call the ‘No More Changing of Clocks Act,’ officially known as The Sunshine Protection Act, a ridiculous Clock changing process that takes place twice a year, costs our Country a fortune, is bad for Crime, stress on people, Sports, and just about everything else you can imagine,” Trump at 12:12 a.m. ET Friday.
The bill would make daylight saving time permanent, keeping clocks on the summer setting year-round.
“People don’t want to go around changing their Clocks anymore and, besides, far and away, most people like having an hour of extra sunlight in the evening, rather than in the morning,” Trump wrote.
House records show the bill passed 308-117 on July 14. The Senate has not voted on it. The president singled out Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for holding up the bill, for “reasons unknown.”
In fact, Cotton has previously explained his opposition. In an Oct. 28, 2025, floor speech, he said he "will always oppose any effort to adopt Daylight Savings Time year-round," warning it would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans." He cited a similar effort in 1974, when the U.S. last tried year-round daylight time and some children were killed walking to school in the dark.
Trump, on his part, said studies "have shown, conclusively," that the change would lower the risk of heart problems, stroke and seasonal depression. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine takes the opposite position, favoring permanent standard time and warning that permanent daylight time would leave clocks "out of sync with our biology year-round."
There is some evidence for the outlandish-sounding claims Trump made in his post. He wrote that the change would “Decrease Robbery and Murder Rates”; a 2015 paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics found that a 7% decrease in crime could be observed after the switch to DST. Trump also claimed that the bill would reduce car accidents; there is some evidence that the number of car accidents increases around the time of the switch to daylight saving time.
Perhaps most importantly for the president was a claim about golf. Trump said Brian Rolapp, CEO of the PGA tour, needed later winter daylight because golf tournaments "run out of sunlight." No public statement matching Trump's description of Rolapp’s position could be found.