Trump wants Congress to end time changes, keep country on daylight saving time. Here's what that would look like

Daylight saving time is currently in effect, with its practice leading to clocks changing twice a year

President Donald Trump on Friday urged Congress to “push hard for more daylight at the end of a day” in his latest dig at the semiannual changing of clocks.

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social media network, said it would be “Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!”

The Republican president’s position calling for more daylight would push the schedule forward, keeping the country on daylight saving time. His post came a day after a Senate panel heard testimony examining whether to set one time all year instead of shifting.

There has been growing interest in states to standardize daylight saving time in recent years.

But daylight saving time, when clocks are set from spring to fall one hour ahead of standard time, is still recognized in most parts of the country.

Trump last year called for the Republican Party to eliminate daylight saving time, saying it was "inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

But he backed off that call last month, with another post on social media calling it a “50-50 issue."

The president said some people would like more light later in the day but some want more light early so they don't have to take their kids to school in the dark.

“When something’s a 50-50 issue, it’s hard to get excited about it,” he said.

The Senate in 2022 unanimously approved a measure that would make daylight saving time permanent across the United States, but it did not advance.

Under federal law, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March, and runs through the first Sunday of November in most of the U.S.

Here's a breakdown of what it is, why it was created, what states observe it and more.

Why do we have daylight saving time? Why it was created

Clocks used to spring ahead on the first Sunday in April and remained that way until the final Sunday in October, but a change was put in place in part to allow children to trick-or-treat in more daylight.

In the United States, daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks, running from early-to-mid March to the beginning of November in states that observe it.

Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of daylight saving time when he wrote in a 1784 essay about saving candles and saying, "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." But that was meant more as satire than a serious consideration.

Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916, during World War I as a way to conserve fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon after.

The United States didn't adopt daylight saving time until March 19, 1918, with the intention of adding additional daylight hours also as a way to help save energy costs during World War I, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. However, it was unpopular and abolished after World War I.

On Feb. 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a year-round daylight saving time, which he called "wartime." The law, was again meant to instate daylight saving time to "help conserve fuel and promote national security defense," the department said. This lasted until Sept. 30, 1945.

Daylight saving time didn't become standard in the US until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that clocks would advance one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and turn back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.

States could still exempt themselves from daylight saving time, as long as the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round daylight saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 in order to conserve energy.

But portions of the law have been changed a few times since, the department said. The policy as it stands today, implemented by former President George W. Bush in 2005, extended daylight saving time by a few weeks, starting on the second Sunday in March, and ending on the first Sunday in November.

Which states don't observe daylight saving time?

Nearly every U.S. state observes daylight saving time, with the exceptions of Arizona (although some Native American tribes do observe DST in their territories) and Hawaii. U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.