double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs vietnamese seafood double-skinned crabs mud crab exporter double-skinned crabs double-skinned crabs crabs crab exporter soft shell crab crab meat crab roe mud crab sea crab vietnamese crabs seafood food vietnamese sea food double-skinned crab double-skinned crab soft-shell crabs meat crabs roe crabs
Politics

Daylight Saving Time may be on the way out — now what?

By
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published March 15, 2022
Updated March 16, 2022, 10:58 a.m. ET

The clock may be running out on the biannual headache of Daylight Saving Time — but what does that mean?

The US Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to do away with the twice-a-year shift in our clocks by making Daylight Saving Time permanent.

Here’s a look at the history of Daylight Saving Time and how it could affect you if the House and President Joe Biden approve the measure.

Blue alarm clock with a yellow post it note attached on white background. Spring forward writes on post it note.
If the Sunshine Protection Act is passed, Americans will no longer adjust the hour forward or backward. Getty Images/iStockphoto
In this March 7, 2013, file photo the sun breaks through clouds over the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Daylight-saving time begins at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 10, 2013.
The House of Representatives will soon vote on the Sunshine Protection Act, which erases the biannual tradition of switching the clock. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
  • If the measure becomes law, the clocks would not “fall back” by one hour in November and remain at Daylight Saving Time permanently — without having to “spring ahead” in March, the bill says.
  • The US first adopted DST in 1918 during World War I and rescinded it the following year, then brought back during World War II — but wasn’t regulated by the federal government until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act.
  • In 1974, President Richard Nixon again pulled the plug, but the move proved so unpopular with Americans — including parents who feared sending their kids to school in the dark — that President Gerald Ford later hit the reset button.
  • Ben Franklin is widely credited with coming up with the idea of daylight savings time in a satirical piece in the Journal de Paris in 1784, National Geographic says.
  • Not all of the USA observes DST — Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico and US territories, including Guam and the US Virgin Islands are not affected by the twice-a-year clock change, the US Energy Department says.
  • If the Senate proposal — called the Sunshine Protection Act — is ultimately enacted, it will take effect in the fall of 2023 and would mark the third time in US history that DST has been shelved.