The clock strikes early: Daylight saving time ends sooner than you think

Date:2025-08-29 02:31:05 Category:News Views:1 Comment:0

Those long summer days are becoming shorter, which means it’s almost time for Americans to adjust their clocks.

According to TimeAndDate, Americans will turn their clocks back from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 2, marking the end of daylight saving time. This means the clocks will change a day earlier than last year, when daylight saving time ended on Nov. 3.

Most people throughout the country adjust their clocks twice a year, first “springing forward” to cherish an extra hour of evening daylight during the summer months before “falling back” to standard time for winter.

“In the United States, this has the effect of creating more sunlit hours in the evening during months when the weather is the warmest,”according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The history of daylight saving time

Daylight saving time was introduced in the U.S. in 1918 under the term “Fast Time.”

However, it was repealed less than a year later, though cities such as Boston, New York and Pittsburgh continued to use it.

Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt reintroduced a clock change in 1942 under the term “War Time,” which lasted until 1945.

But until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was passed, there were no formal or uniform rules for changing clocks.

In 2022, a bill named the Sunshine Protection Act, that would have made daylight saving time permanent, was passed by the Senate but died in the House. A new iteration of the bill was introduced to the Senate in January.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has been a longtime supporter of eliminating the need to change the clocks and making daylight saving time permanent and is a co-sponsor of the bill.

“This head-spinning ritual of falling back and springing forward has gone on long enough,” Markey said in an email to MassLive in October 2024. “It isn’t just a nuisance — changing our clocks also has a very real impact on our economy, our health, and our happiness."

President Donald Trump also expressed opposition to changing the clocks, but he said he wanted to eliminate daylight saving time and maintain standard time.

“Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our nation,” the president wrote on X in December 2024.

Gallup, a global analytics and advisory firm conducted a poll in January to measure Americans’ opinions about daylight saving time and discovered that the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice.

The survey found that 48% want standard time year round, and that 24% prefer daylight saving time year round. The smallest percentage — 19% — preferred keeping things the way they are now with the clocks changing twice a year.