Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are toying with a new, groundbreaking initiative that would impact the lives of all Americans.
Eliminating Daylight Savings!
Yesterday, both Musk and Ramaswamy each posted to X about potentially eliminating the twice yearly clock-changing practice that dozens of states and millions of Americans say shouldn’t happen at all.
Musk randomly replied to an X user complaining about daylight saving time with the comment, “Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!”
Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes! https://t.co/5ePhgzYLsF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 27, 2024
Ramaswamy follow up and called the practice “inefficient & easy to change.”
It’s inefficient & easy to change.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 27, 2024
Daylight saving time always runs from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November and, on those days, Americans shift their clocks forward and back one hour, respectively, to make use of more daylight hours in the spring and summer months.
However, getting the move changed permanently would require an act of Congress and approval by the president (in this case, Trump).
But the practice isn’t widely liked, and lawmakers at the local and federal levels have pushed for years to make daylight saving time permanent and eliminate the back-and-forth, though no proposal has made it through both chambers of Congress.
In 2022, the Senate passed legislation that would have made daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023, but it did not progress in the House, and new bipartisan legislation introduced this year isn’t expected to be at the top of the priority list.