Set your alarms — and then set them back. Daylight saving time returns on Sunday, March 8, 2026, and for millions of Americans, that means one fewer hour of sleep, a week of groggy mornings, and the same debate that’s been circling for decades: why are we still doing this?
At 2 a.m. local time on that Sunday, clocks spring forward one hour, officially kicking off what federal law defines as the period between spring and fall when most of the country runs one hour ahead of standard time. It ends on the first Sunday in November. That’s the rule, and it has been for a long time — though not without a fight to change it.
A Wartime Invention That Stuck Around
The whole thing started as a wartime measure. The U.S. first adopted the practice in 1918, during World War I, as a way to conserve fuel. The logic, as reported by ABC News, was straightforward: by moving clocks ahead an hour, the country could divert coal-fired electricity away from homes and toward the military. Practical, even clever, for its time.
But once the war ended, the practice became a patchwork. States and cities made their own calls on whether to observe it, and by the mid-20th century, the inconsistency had become a logistical headache for airlines, railways, and businesses operating across state lines. Congress stepped in with the Uniform Time Act of 1966, standardizing the system nationwide. Airlines and businesses, exhausted by the chaos, had pushed hard for uniformity. They got it — mostly.
Not Everyone Plays Along
Even today, the rule has carve-outs. Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas don’t observe daylight saving time at all. They stay put while the rest of the country shuffles its clocks twice a year. For residents of those places, the biannual ritual is largely background noise — something that affects how they schedule calls with the mainland, not their sleep.
That’s the exception, though. For the vast majority of Americans, the spring-forward is a fixture of life — annoying, arguably archaic, but stubbornly persistent.
The Health Costs Are Real
How bad is it, really? Worse than most people realize. The American Heart Association points to studies showing a measurable spike in heart attacks on the Monday after the spring time change — and elevated stroke risk for two days afterward. Fatal car crashes also rise in the days immediately following the shift, with researchers attributing the danger primarily to sleep deprivation. The risk, notably, is highest in the morning.
It’s not just about feeling tired. Experts say the disruption runs deeper than that. “Not unlike when one travels across many time zones, how long it can take is very different for different people,” Dr. Eduardo Sanchez of the American Heart Association told the Associated Press. Darker mornings and lighter evenings throw off the body’s internal clock — and for some people, that disruption lingers for weeks, or even longer.
The Legislative Logjam
Still, Congress hasn’t moved. At least 20 states have passed legislation or resolutions to make daylight saving time permanent — but most of those laws are contingent on neighboring states doing the same, and all of them require federal approval that hasn’t come. A bill introduced in 2023 to make the change nationwide has stalled repeatedly on Capitol Hill, caught in the slow grind of legislative inertia. It’s a rare issue with broad public support and almost no visible congressional momentum. Washington, apparently, has bigger clocks to wind.
The political will just hasn’t materialized — at least not yet. And so, twice a year, the country keeps resetting.
Canada Makes a Move
Interestingly, one North American jurisdiction isn’t waiting around. Canada’s British Columbia has announced it will stop observing daylight saving time altogether — and the reasoning carries an unmistakably geopolitical edge. “Recent actions from the U.S. have shifted how B.C. approaches decisions that merit alignment, including on time zones,” the provincial government stated, adding that the decision “reflects the current preferences and needs of British Columbians.”
That’s a notable shift. For years, the argument for keeping time zones synchronized across the U.S.-Canada border was practical — commerce, travel, coordination. British Columbia’s decision suggests that calculus is changing, at least in some quarters north of the border.
Meanwhile, Americans will do what they’ve done every second Sunday in March for more than half a century: lose an hour, grumble about it, and wonder — not for the first time — whether anyone in Washington is ever going to do something about it.
