In much of the United States, clocks will go back again on Sunday, when Daylight Saving Time ends.
Congress and some states tried several times over the decade to eliminate the biannual exercise, but to no avail.
President Donald Trump has expressed support for ending time changes, arguing that permanent daylight saving time would allow for more daylight to match daytime patterns while reducing after-hours activities, including crime. But many health and sleep experts oppose it, citing health and safety risks.
Here’s what you need to know as we prepare to rewind Sunday — or let our cell phones do it instantly.
When does daylight saving time end?
Daylight saving time began at 2 a.m. on March 8 and ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday.
Unlike spring, when we lose an hour and the clocks skip the 2-hour time completely, we will gain an extra hour on Sunday, with the clocks moving from 1:59 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The sun will also begin to set earlier in the United States as we approach the end of fall and winter.
The extra hour doesn’t necessarily mean more festivities on Halloween night: While some jurisdictions allow bars to serve last call according to Sunday’s updated time, California rules say bars must stop serving alcohol two hours after midnight, regardless of the 1 a.m. repeat.
How long will standard time last?
U.S. Standard Time will remain in effect, as will earlier sunsets and darker evenings, until spring arrives and DST resumes on March 14.
Next year, daylight saving time ends on November 7.
Standardized start and end dates have changed over the years, but since 2007, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Department of Astronomical Applications.
Why do we observe daylight saving time?
According to the Department of Astronomical Applications, this practice, established by the Standard Time Act in 1918, aims to extend daylight hours in summer by pushing back sunset by an extra hour.
Daylight saving time, a contested idea after its adoption, was quickly repealed in 1919, becoming a local issue. It was recreated at the start of World War II and observed from 1942 to 1945, according to the department.
After the war, implementation of DST varied from state to state until the Uniform Time Act was passed in 1966, standardizing DST dates but allowing local exemptions if states or localities did not want to participate.
President Richard Nixon briefly moved the country to year-round daylight saving time in 1974, but the prolonged morning darkness was widely criticized and blamed on incidents of students being hit by vehicles. Congress later reversed its time changes after Nixon resigned later that year.
Which states are not observing?
Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time and therefore do not change clocks twice a year, according to the Department of Astronomical Applications.
The U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands also observe permanent standard time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Do other countries do this?
Most countries observe some version of “daylight saving time,” according to the department, but not all follow the same schedule as the United States.
Most countries in the Northern Hemisphere that observe daylight saving time are in Europe and North America.
Some countries in the Southern Hemisphere also observe some version of DST, but below the equator the seasons are reversed, so the start and end dates of their “DST” are reversed from ours.
According to the Pew Research Center, only about a third of all countries observe daylight saving time. About half of all countries observed it at some point, but no longer do so.
What efforts have been made recently to end this practice?
Nearly all states have considered legislation to maintain standard time or daylight saving time, and 19 states have passed bills or resolutions to implement it year-round over the past seven years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But because federal law doesn’t allow daylight saving time year-round, states would have to wait until Congress passes a bill to make the change.
The Senate passed the Sun Protection Act of 2022, which would make daylight saving time permanent year-round, but the bill has not advanced in the House.
A version of the bill introduced in the House in January 2025 was stalled in the Senate this summer.
In early October, Trump, in an article on Truth Social, urged Senate Republicans to “move forward” on the bill, saying the time change process “costs our country a fortune, is bad for crime, stress on people, sports and just about everything else you can imagine.”
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