The House passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent

In a win for anyone who doesn’t know how to change their microwave clock, the House passed legislation on Tuesday to make daylight saving time permanent.

But don’t throw out the appliance manual yet: The Sunshine Protection Act—a bill championed by President Trump that would do away with all the “spring forward/fall back” business—faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Similar bills have stalled in Congress twice in the last four years.

Everyone hates changing the clocks twice a year. Just 12% of US adults approve of the current time change system, while 47% oppose it, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted last October, which is about what you can expect public opinion to be when you ask if people want their sleep schedule messed with. Plus, researchers have linked the time changes to an increase in heart attacks and strokes, and an uptick in car accidents.

But there’s a debate over the best fix

Lawmakers across party lines are divided over which is better: permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time.

On one side:

• Proponents of setting everything to daylight saving time say that later sunsets are good for businesses like retail and restaurants.
• One Brookings Institution study from 2015 found a 27% drop in robberies with an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. And a 2012 Stanford study showed a significant decrease in violent crime.

On the other side:

• Fans of sticking with standard time argue that later sunrises would mean some areas of the country might not get light until 10am—which could be a nightmare for farmers and others working early mornings.
• Advocates also believe that standard time better aligns with our bodies’ natural circadian rhythms.

We’ve tried this before: When the country tested making daylight saving time permanent in the 1970s, people feared that children walking to school in the dark mornings would lead to more accidents. There was no evidence to show this actually happened, but shifting public opinion ended the trial in less than a year.—MM