WASHINGTON D.C. — Fans of permanent Daylight Saving Time, including a pending law in the state of Washington, are unlikely to see their preferred clock alignment take over definitively on November 1 at 2.am.
The potential permanency of DST, after the U.S. House approved a permanent change, known as the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 on a 308-117 vote on July 14, is running head long into the realities of Beltway politics in the U.S. Senate. The long, strange trip of DST in the continental United States seems guaranteed of at least one thing: it’s going to continue splitting the calendar with Standard Time for the foreseeable future.
The Sunshine Protection Act would make DST permanent in the U.S. unless a state has already authorized the observance of Standard Time, as Arizona and Hawaii do. The U.S. Territories American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also observe their respective standard times.
Washington lawmakers approved a permanent switch to DST in 2019 with a law signed by former Gov. Jay Inslee, but Substitute House Bill 1196 (SHB 1196) cannot officially take effect until current federal law (the Uniform Time Act) is changed via congressional approval and Presidential signature.
Senate Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) have vocally opposed the Sunshine Protection Act and a permanent change to DST. “There are places throughout the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states that wouldn’t see the sun until 9, 9:30, almost 10 o’clock (in the morning) in some cases,” Cotton said in an interview with syndicated host, Hugh Hewitt. “That would be very dangerous, especially for kids who are walking to school, biking to school, being left at bus stops. This is one of those issues that is more of a regional issue than it is a partisan issue.”
According to TheHill.com, Senate GOP sources say the legislation would not be able to pass the upper chamber with unanimous consent and warn that pushing it to the floor under regular order would take up at least a week of the Senate’s time. That’s a big price to pay when there are only a few weeks of legislative session left in the year and a lot of priorities on the agenda, they say. Congress is in recess until September 14th.
In 1973, Congress made DST permanent and then quickly reversed the action after seeing the practical effects. At one point in 1973, public support polling for permanent DST hit 79%. But after Congress permanently set back the clocks for both summer and winter hours, support plummeted by February 1974 to 42%.
Back to 2026, if the Senate fails to bring up the Sunshine Protection Act for a vote by the final day of the current session, scheduled for January 3, 2027, the bill passed by the House would expire and require the legislative bill process to start all over again.
In March 2022, the Senate passed a permanent change to DST by unanimous consent. The U.S. House did not take up the bill, and it expired at the end of the same year. In 2026 those roles are reversed and President Donald Trump is urging Senate Republicans to pass the permanent change to DST.
On July 15, after passing the House, the Sunshine Protection Act was received in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation where it sits for now. It clearly doesn’t appear to be a Senate priority before the November 3 general election. Its only hope for passage, before expiration, would be in a lame duck session after the election and before a new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027.