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How Trump Could Change Daylight Saving Time

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thursday

Changing daylight saving time has obvious appeal for Donald Trump. Many people hate switching their clocks twice a year, so ending that practice may win him rare bipartisan approval. Trump could call out Joe Biden and Democratic congressional leaders for failing to take action despite growing momentum around the issue in recent years. And altering the way millions of Americans experience time definitely has the sort of kinglike vibe he enjoys.

So will President Trump finally end this biannual ritual? Can he even do that? Is he in favor of permanent standard time or permanent daylight saving time? Does he even know the difference? Here’s an explainer, which we’ll keep updated, on Trump’s clock-switching stance.

Perplexed? You’re in good company. Under the current system, in addition to changing our clocks, making up for lost sleep, and adjusting kids’ nap schedules, we’re expected to waste precious time remembering the difference between two not very obvious terms.

Basically, standard time is the one most people in the United States use in the winter months. Each year, we “fall back” to standard time on the first Sunday in November. Then we “spring forward” to daylight saving time on the second Sunday in March.

This is pretty confusing as “standard” lasts only four months. During the other eight months, we’re on daylight saving time. Even more confusingly, a lot of people refer to it as “daylight savings time,” plural, though that is grammatically incorrect. Oh, and two states, Arizona and Hawaii, don’t observe daylight saving time at all. It’s a mess!

Unilaterally, no. We’re in our current temporal predicament owing to a series of actions that originated in Congress, as Vox explained:

In the United States, [daylight saving time] was formally adopted during World War I as part of an effort to save fuel, which was especially scarce. But it was only done during the summer — otherwise, farmers would have to wake up and begin........

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