Daylight Saving Begins on Sunday—What to Know About Efforts to Lock the Clock

Clocks across America will jump an hour back at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.

A picture of an alarm clock as North America moved to daylight saving time on March 10, 2024. Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images

It’s almost time!

Daylight saving time will begin on Sunday, causing clocks to skip forward an hour at 2:00 a.m. for most people living in the United States.

The majority of Americans who are expected to lose an hour of sleep on March 8 don’t support the current daylight saving system.

An AP-NORC poll from 2025 showed that just over 10 percent of Americans supported the current system, while nearly half of the others polled opposed it. The rest of the survey-takers remained neutral about the topic.

But there are efforts to lock the clock so Americans can press snooze (for good) on the ongoing “spring forward” and “fall back” rules, which disrupt sleep schedules from coast to coast twice a year.

History

Daylight saving has been a controversial topic for over a decade in the United States.

In the late 1800s, railroads used different time zones. Then, in the 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned the entire nation’s clocks an hour ahead to save energy for World War II, and after that, in the 1960s, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 established a uniform Daylight Saving Time across most of America.

Every year, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March for “spring forward” and ends on the first Sunday in November for “fall back.”

Who Observes It

Most states across America practice daylight saving.

Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and most of Arizona do not participate.

This year, people who live in Canada’s Province of British Columbia will set their clocks back for the last time after officials announced it was adopting a permanent year-round daylight saving time (DST) “to improve people’s overall health, reduce disruptions for families, simplify scheduling, and provide an extra hour of evening light during the winter months.”

This means that when November 2026 rolls around, clocks will not fall back in British Columbia.

National Effort

The Sunshine Protection Act (S.29) passed the U.S. Senate in 2022 but did not advance in the House.

The act, which was introduced by Marco Rubio when he served as a senator in Florida before becoming Secretary of State, would have made daylight saving time permanent.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, but the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation never held a hearing on it.

In 2018, Florida became the first state to enact legislation that would permanently observe daylight saving time as soon as the federal government would allow it.

Over a dozen other states, including a majority of the South, enacted similar legislation, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Any efforts to eliminate daylight saving time in Washington, D.C., will likely have backing from President Donald Trump, who previously suggested he’d support it, saying it was inconvenient and costly.

Local Efforts

In 2026, 16 states have introduced bills related to daylight saving and standard time.

Bills relating to time changes are pending in California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

A proposal to provide a year-round standard time if the federal law were amended failed in Mississippi.

But if the laws were passed, for those laws to go into effect, congressional action would be required per the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966, which forces states to get the green light from D.C. before any permanent time shift.