The House voted to make daylight saving time permanent. The Senate is stuck. And the sleep doctors want the opposite of what Congress is fighting over.
At 2 a.m. on Sunday, most of America will do something it almost never does: agree to get more sleep. Clocks fall back to 1 a.m., daylight saving time ends, and for one night the entire country is on the same prescription.
Enjoy it. Washington has spent the year trying to make sure it never happens again, and the doctors have been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to get a word in.
Here is where things stand. In July the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act by a lopsided 308 to 117, after the Energy and Commerce Committee waved it through 48 to 1 in May. Sponsored by Florida Republican Vern Buchanan, the bill would end the twice-a-year clock change by keeping the country on daylight saving time all year round: later sunrises, later sunsets, forever.
Then it hit the Senate, where good ideas and bad ideas alike go to sit in the Commerce Committee. Majority Leader John Thune told Politico in early October that there is no clear path forward. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has vowed to block any attempt to fast-track it, arguing that permanent daylight time would send Arkansas schoolchildren to the bus stop in the dark. President Trump, who supports the bill, responded by posting Cotton’s phone number on Truth Social and inviting the public to call him. Congress is out until November 9. No vote is scheduled. The clocks, as ever, are not waiting.
Now for the part that gets lost in the shouting. Medicine is not on the fence about this, and it is not on the president’s side either.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the National Sleep Foundation have all endorsed permanent standard time, which is to say the time we are switching to this weekend, not the time the House voted to lock in. The AASM’s position statement, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2024, argues that standard time lines up best with the body’s circadian clock, because the clock is set by morning light rather than evening light.
The logic is unglamorous but hard to argue with. Daylight saving time does not create sunlight; it moves an hour of it from the morning to the evening. Erik Herzog, a circadian biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, estimates permanent daylight time would add more than 100 days a year of dark morning commutes, with winter sunrises after 8 a.m. across much of the north and west. Too little morning light, he says, means chronic sleep disruption, fatigue, and worse performance at work and school. America actually ran this experiment in 1974, hated the dark mornings, and reversed it within the year.
The health stakes are not trivial. A Stanford modeling study published in PNAS last fall projected that permanent standard time would modestly lower rates of obesity and stroke compared with the current switching regime, which at population scale works out to something like 300,000 fewer strokes a year and 2.6 million fewer cases of obesity. Permanent daylight time captured about two-thirds of that benefit. These are projections from a model, not a randomized trial, and the researchers say so. But the direction of travel is the same one the sleep doctors have been pointing in for years.
If there is a consolation this weekend, it is that the fall change is the gentle one. The well-documented bumps in heart attacks and car crashes cluster around the spring shift, when an hour disappears. Falling back is closer to a free gift, though not entirely free: one analysis found a roughly 6 percent rise in crashes in the four weeks after the autumn switch, likely because evening commutes suddenly happen in the dark.
Here is my opinion, and it is only that. The Sunshine Protection Act is popular because people hate changing clocks, not because they have a considered view on sunrise. A 2025 AP-NORC poll found 47 percent of Americans oppose the current system and only 12 percent like it, with 40 percent shrugging. Congress has read that as a mandate for evening light. The evidence reads it as a mandate for consistency, and the consistent option medicine prefers happens to be the one nobody is lobbying for. Golf courses and retailers want the late sunsets. Sleep scientists want the early sunrises. Guess who has the better lobbyists.
In the meantime, the practical advice from Johns Hopkins biostatistician Vadim Zipunnikov fits on an index card: bright mornings, dim evenings, dark bedroom. Keep your usual bedtime Saturday night rather than staying up because you can. Get outside soon after waking on Sunday. Skip the late coffee.
And if you are a senator, enjoy the extra hour. You may need it to read the position statements.
References
Straight Arrow News, “Clocks will fall back Nov. 1 — but what time should America keep?” (Oct 31, 2026): https://san.com/cc/clocks-will-fall-back-nov-1-but-what-time-should-america-keep/
TIME, “Daylight Saving Time Ends This Week. Here’s How to Best Prepare Yourself for the Time Change” (Oct 26, 2026): https://time.com/article/2026/10/26/daylight-saving-time-standard-clock-change-2026-sleep-health-bill/
Men’s Journal, “Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday, but Scientists Warn of a Hidden Health Risk” (Oct 29, 2026): https://www.mensjournal.com/health/daylight-saving-time-ends-sunday-but-scientists-warn-of-a-hidden-health-risk
Everyday Health via Yahoo, “Daylight Saving Time Is Ending — What Sleep Docs Want You to Know” (Oct 16, 2026): https://health.yahoo.com/wellness/sleep/articles/daylight-saving-time-ending-sleep-180000022.html
WWSB/MySuncoast, “House passes Buchanan’s bill to make daylight saving time permanent” (July 14, 2026): https://www.mysuncoast.com/2026/07/14/buchanan-bill-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent-heads-house-floor/
Fox News, “Daylight saving time battle heats up as push to stop clock changes hits Senate wall” (Oct 6, 2026): https://www.foxnews.com/politics/battle-over-daylight-saving-time-erupts-push-stop-changing-clocks-hits-senate-wall
NBC News, “Trump appears to post Sen. Tom Cotton’s cell number in push to make daylight saving time permanent”: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/tom-cotton-cell-number-post-daylight-savings-time-permanent-rcna601293
Congress.gov, H.R. 139, Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, all actions: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/139/all-actions
Weed L, et al. “Circadian-informed modeling predicts regional variation in obesity and stroke outcomes under different permanent US time policies.” PNAS, Sept 15, 2025: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40953265/
Rishi MA, et al. “Permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine position statement.” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2024: https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.10898
