President-elect Donald Trump announced plans Friday to end daylight saving time, in a post on his social media site Truth Social.

“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. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

The plan, if approved by Congress, would put an end to springing forward one hour between early March and early November. In Reno, that would mean sunrises as early as 4:32 a.m. in the summer, and sunsets no later than 8:30 p.m.

What do you think about daylight saving time in Nevada? Tell us!

How do Northern Nevadans feel about daylight saving time?

Nationwide poll results on clock-switching are varied. Respondents to a YouGov poll in March 2023 backed permanent daylight saving time by 62%. But in another poll conducted the previous year by Monmouth University found that only 44% wanted DST to be permanent, with 13% favoring permanent standard time instead. Just 35% wanted to keep the current spring-ahead, fall-back system.

The country has tried permanent DST before — the opposite of what Trump is proposing — and we weren’t fans, at least in Northern Nevada. In response to the 1973 Oil Crisis, the federal government moved the entire country to full-time daylight saving in January 1974 in an energy-saving move. But locals at the time didn’t enjoy the late winter sunrise.

• “I used to enjoy the drive out here. The sun coming up was beautiful,” bus driver Charlene Franks told the Reno Evening Gazette. “Now it’s pitch-black almost until I get to B.D. (Billinghurst Jr. High School).”
• “We hate daylight saving time and a lot of the other ranchers around here are against it too,” Stan Ellison of Tuscarora said. “It doesn’t fit with our operations. You can’t feed cows in the dark. That’s livestock nature. These cows want to get up when the sun is coming up.”
• “We have trouble because we have to feed the animals at our house and they aren’t used to being fed in the dark,” said student Jaine Larson.
• “Daylight savings time year around. Was this another blunder by our leaders?” Oma C. Hibdon wrote in a letter to the editor. “Perhaps the citizens should fight together and refuse to go along with some of the stupid regulations handed down.”
• “In an effort to get us out of this and other Nixon snafus, I suggest that the Congress cut off the remaining years of his term and add them to that of a competent leader,” wrote Foster Kain.

Are there benefits to the current clock-changing system?

It’s mostly a matter of opinion.

Nevadans in 1974 weren’t fond of the morning darkness during the nation’s brief experiment with permanent DST. On the other hand, if Nevada were to stop observing DST, sunrise would take place before 5 a.m. in Reno-Sparks from May through July, with light appearing on the horizon just before 4 a.m. in mid-June — an unpleasant prospect for those with toddlers and/or pets who schedule the start of their days not around clocks, but around how much sunlight is coming through the window.

Where and why did DST start anyway?

According to timeanddate.com, “daylight saving time is the practice of setting the clocks one hour ahead of standard time to make use of more sunlight in the spring, summer, and fall evenings. Daylight saving time (DST) is used to save energy and make better use of daylight. It was first used in 1908 in Thunder Bay, Canada.”

A fair amount of blame gets assigned to Benjamin Franklin, who merely proposed the idea of waking up earlier during the summer; or to farmers, whose livestock don’t adhere to humans’ clocks in the first place. But the first large-scale implementation of DST was in Germany in World War I to conserve coal.

Daylight saving time became a national standard in the U.S. in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act, which was established as a way to continue to conserve energy. The thinking was, if it’s light out longer in the evening instead of the early morning, that’s less time you’ll need to use lights in your home.

The country spends nearly two-thirds of the year under daylight saving time after it was extended into early November in 1986 — a move partially influenced by candy makers, who wanted longer evening daylight hours on Halloween.

Does changing clocks affect health?

Yes, due to both accidents and heart attacks, according to several studies. The University of Colorado at Boulder looked at two decades’ worth of car crashes and discovered that fatal accidents increase by 6% during the first week after clocks are moved ahead in the spring, accounting for approximately 28 additional deaths per year. Meanwhile, researchers in cardiovascular medicine found a 24% increase in heart attacks the Monday after daylight saving time began in the spring (as well as a 21% decrease in heart attacks the Tuesday after DST ends each fall).

What are Nevada legislators doing about daylight saving time?

Recent efforts to end clock-changing in Nevada have been to make daylight saving time permanent, not abolishing it.

Sen. Robin Titus already has submitted a bill draft request to make changes to the state’s daylight saving time practice for the 2025 session, which begins on Feb. 3, although it’s unclear if the bill’s intent would be to permanently spring forward or permanently fall back.

A trio of rural Nevada senators introduced Senate Bill 153 during the 2021 session of the Nevada Legislature that would have implemented daylight saving time in Nevada year-round, pending federal approval. The bill did not receive a hearing in 2021.

No bills affecting daylight saving time were introduced during Nevada’s 2023 legislative session.

Under the Uniform Time Act of 1966, states may choose not to observe daylight saving time, but they are not allowed to choose to observe year-round daylight saving time without federal approval. Neither Arizona nor Hawaii move their clocks ahead for the summer, along with Puerto Rico, the Navajo Nation, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.

What has the federal government been doing about DST?

Members of Congress had proposed permanent daylight saving time over the past few years, though nothing has come of it.

The Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 would permanently extend daylight saving time from eight months of the year to the full 12 months. It was introduced by a bipartisan group of 14 senators on March 1, 2023, but as of Sept. 3, 2024, it has yet to receive a hearing — let alone be passed into law.

A similar bill was introduced in 2021 and was passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in March 2022 but didn’t receive a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives. That bill died when a new Congress was seated in January 2023.

What have other states been doing about daylight saving time?

Twenty states have laws on the books to enact permanent daylight saving time, rather than abolish it, if such moves were approved by the federal government: Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Contributing: Mike Snider, USA TODAY; Jennifer Sangalang, Florida Today; Ginny Beagan, USA TODAY Network-Florida.