Tuesday July 14th, the House of Representatives passed a bill to let states choose Daylight Saving Time as a permanent, year-round thing. It’s called the Sunshine Protection Act. The bill passed by an astonishing 308 to 117. Now it has to go to the Senate and then to the president. The president has already let it be known that he’s all for it. On Truth Social he wrote in May that it would give people “a longer, brighter Day. And who can be against that?”
During the summer, Daylight Savings Time gives you an extra hour of evening sunlight. And when it comes to a happiness maker, sunlight is it. The golden shafts of the sun raise your brain’s serotonin, dopamine, cortisol, and endorphins, lifting your energy level and literally making you happy. No wonder there are so many songs praising sunlight and its impact on your moods, from the 1930 “Sunny Side Of The Street” to the Beatles 1969 “Here Comes the Sun.”
Daylight Saving Time was first introduced in Germany in 1916 at the beginning of World War I. The reason? To help Germany save coal and artificial gas. With sunlight later in the day, the Germans reasoned that their citizens would need less fuel to light up their nights. A few weeks later, the French and the English followed suit. Then, two years later, the Americans got on board.
This is not the first time that year-round Daylight Saving Time bills have been tried in Congress. There have been over 250 attempts to pass bills making the sun shine for as long as possible in the evenings. Seven attempts have been successful. But they have not worked out that well.
For example, in 1973, America had an oil crisis. Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia formed a global oil cartel and almost quadrupled the price of oil. President Richard Nixon thought he could counter this in part by instituting year round daylight saving time. That’s when the dark side of year-round daylight saving time became apparent. In some cities in America, the sun did not rise in mid-winter until nearly nine am. Mornings were dark and dreary. Children waiting by the roadside in the blackness for school buses were being killed. In Florida alone eight children lost their lives in just a month. How do we know these deaths were related to the dark mornings of winter Daylight Savings Time? The year before the eight deaths, Florida had experienced only two. Parents were terrified. Gallup poll numbers on Daylight Savings Time plunged from 79% in the summer to 42% in the winter.
And the effect on happiness was not what you’d expect. It turns out that your brain needs sunlight the most early in the morning. Early morning sunlight sets your energy level on high and boosts your shot at calm and happiness for the rest of the day.
Despite this, it turns out that Daylight Saving Time bill is a benefit for, of all people, the owners of golf courses. The extra hour of sunlight late in the day gives golfers more time to go out on the links. And it gives owners a longer golf season. All that extra time putting and driving translates into an extra $200-$400 million a year for the golf industry. One golf course owner who would benefit from this extra money is a Florida resident who owns 17 golf courses. The president of the United States.
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
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References:
Congress.gov. “H.R.139 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): Sunshine Protection Act of 2025.” Accessed July 16, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/139.
Energy and Commerce Committee. “House Passes Legislation to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent.” July 14, 2026. https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/house-passes-legislation-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent.
FactCheck.org. “Trump’s Push to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent.” June 5, 2026.https://www.factcheck.org/2026/06/trumps-push-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent/.
Forbes. “Inside Donald Trump’s Billion-Dollar Golf Empire.” June 17, 2026.https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2026/06/17/inside-donald-trumps-billion-dollar-golf-empire/.
New York Times. “House Votes for Permanent Daylight Saving Time.” July 14, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/us/politics/house-daylight-savings-time-sunshine-protection-act.html.
Tallahassee Democrat. “US Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time Before. Florida Children Died.” July 15, 2026. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/15/permanent-daylight-saving-time-failed/90926351007/.
The Hill. “House Passes Bill to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent.” July 14, 2026.https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5968255-house-sunshine-protection-act-daylight-saving-time/.
U.S. House of Representatives. Roll Call Vote on the Sunshine Protection Act. July 14, 2026.https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2026/roll238.xml (via Congress.gov).
Washingtonian. “The US Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time in the ’70s. People Hated It.” March 15, 2022.https://washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/
