Clocks across most of the country fell back an hour Sunday, but a Trump-backed bill to make daylight saving time permanent could force them forward again this winter if the Senate passes it unchanged.
The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House on July 14 by a 308-117 vote and has sat in the Senate since.
The bill would repeal the section of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, the federal law that sets the twice-yearly clock changes, and move each U.S. time zone’s standard time forward one hour for good.
That design now carries an awkward side effect.
Because daylight saving time ended Sunday, enacting the House-passed language this fall would mean an immediate one-hour jump across the country unless lawmakers rewrite it, The Washington Post reported.
Senate leaders could wait until the clocks spring forward in March, but that would come after the current session of Congress ends, forcing lawmakers to start the bill over and pass it through the House again.
President Donald Trump has kept up the pressure anyway.
“The United States Senate is letting the Daylight Saving Bill die,” he wrote on Truth Social on Oct. 26, urging a vote.
The White House formally endorsed the measure in a written policy statement the day the House voted, and spokesman Davis Ingle told the Post last week that Trump still wants the Senate to send it to his desk.
The main obstacle is Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who has blocked the bill and argues, along with other lawmakers, that the current spring-forward, fall-back system is the better compromise.