Did you have trouble getting to church on time yesterday? Feeling sleep-deprived this morning? Do you blame the annual “spring forward” to Daylight Saving Time for sleep and schedule issues? You’re not alone — even the President has had enough of the need to change clocks twice a year. Earlier this morning, Donald Trump tweeted for the grouchy majority:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1105110383227035654

That endorsement comes after action last week in the House and Senate. Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Vern Buchanan introduced a bill called the “Sunshine Protection Act,” legislation that would mandate year-round adoption of the DST offset. Other states have taken similar action on their own, although their authority to do so is limited:

Several state-level initiatives have also been launched, including in Florida, where last year lawmakers signaled their intent to go year-round with daylight saving time.

On Saturday, a similar bill passed in the Washington state House and is awaiting action in its Senate.

Under federal law, states are only empowered to opt out of daylight saving time and remain on standard time year round.

Last year, the EU debated whether to take action to eliminate the offset — and if so, how best to do it. They’re, um, still debating it, but a committee has finally given a positive recommendation to implement the change one week ago:

A committee at the European Parliament on Monday gave the thumbs up to scrapping the twice-yearly clock change in the European Union but with a two-year delay to 2021. …

A majority of lawmakers on the European Parliament’s transport and tourism committee backed the Commission’s proposal. The plenary will now have to approve the proposal after which lawmakers will have to thrash out a common position with EU countries.

The EU parliamentary committee got well over four million responses to its open-comments period on the proposal to end DST, 84% of which supported the idea. It may not be a major priority with EU residents, but at least it has more consensus than most. With numbers like that, it’s amazing that DST has lasted as long as it has, especially since it disrupts people twice a year like, er … clockwork.

In last year’s Hot Air reader poll, we saw similar numbers for a national policy to put an end to clock changes. Seventy-nine percent of readers who took the poll wanted a nationwide end to DST, with the other 21% split roughly equally between state control and adopting DST year-round. Those responses didn’t vary much based on party affiliation, either.

Now that we have a presidential endorsement for a no-change policy, let’s offer the poll again for a fresh look at the position of Hot Air’s readership. This time, however, we’ll add a question — how should we set the time if we eliminate DST? I’m in favor of adopting Standard Time across the board, which keeps noon roughly pegged to the position of the sun at all times of the year, but YMMV. As we will no doubt see!

I’ll review the responses tomorrow morning when I guest host for Hugh Hewitt from 6-9 am ET. Er … EDT.

Note: This is not a scientific poll, of course, but a poll of readers who volunteer to submit responses.

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