B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022
ed grumbling at the dinner table
would not yield a solution. He
says he is somewhat agnostic
about whether permanent day-
light saving time or permanent
standard time would be best, but
the science makes it hard to argue
for resetting the clocks twice a
year.
“Imagine if you proposed it
today: ‘Hey, we’re going to do this
thing where we change the clocks,
and it’s going to kill a lot of people
or send them to the hospital, but
we’ll get to have more light in the
afternoon’? I t wouldn’t pass the
sniff test,” he said.
Indeed, there’s a worldwide
movement to abolish clock resets.
Of the 143 countries that ever
used daylight saving time, nearly
half, 69, have abandoned it, ac-
cording to timeanddate.com.
Polling shows Americans wide-
ly detest the practice: 75 percent
would prefer to end it, according
to an October poll by the Associat-
ed Press-NORC Center for Public
Affairs Research. Yet people are
divided — and passionately so —
about whether the country
should have an early sunrise or a
late sunset.
Jay Pea, a retired software en-
gineer and self-described “enthu-
siast for circadian health,” found-
ed the California-based nonprofit
Save Standard Time amid the
wave of legislation calling for
permanent daylight saving time.life, it has a solution and it isn’t
getting done.”
The country adopted daylight
saving time a century ago, and
not — as a popular myth tells us —
to benefit farmers. In 1918, the
United States followed European
countries that shifted the clock
during World War I in an effort to
save fuel during evening hours
and, as historian Michael Down-
ing wrote in his book “Spring
Forward,” to give shoppers more
daylight.
Clock-switching was aban-
doned — partly because farmers
hated it — and then reinstated
during World War II, again as an
energy-saving measure. Until the
Uniform Time Act of 1966 stan-
dardized daylight saving time,
local governments had autonomy
to set the local time. There was
craziness: At one point, Iowa had
23 different daylight saving time
dates.
In the decades since daylight
saving time was standardized in
1966, Congress gradually extend-
ed it from six to eight months. The
nation moved to year-round day-
light saving time once, during an
energy crisis in 1974. It quickly
fell out of favor as the country
endured even longer winter
mornings.
Yates, who runs a tech start-up,
started his public advocacy to
#locktheclock eight years ago af-
ter his wife suggested that repeat-ades, but once Florida passed its
law in 2019, dominoes started to
fall, said Scott Yates, a prominent
lock-the-clock advocate from Col-
orado. The pandemic hastened
the march.
“It’s like with any issue: There’s
a tipping point where suddenly,
it’s right, that’s what we should
do,” Yates said. “The pandemic
made us think about happiness
and [that] day-to-day mental
health really is important, and we
should do everything we should
to promote that.”
Or as one Connecticut lawmak-
er who has been pushing the shift
since 2010 put it: “Coming off of
covid with people cooped up the
way that they are, people want the
extra hour of sunlight,” state Rep.
Kurt Vail (R) said.
Yates believes the issue is so
potent right now that it can at-
tract voters turned off by the
toxicity of modern politics. He
launched a congressional bid this
month built on a platform of
“fixing” daylight saving time, ar-
guing that it’s the perfect issue to
re-engage an apathetic public
who stopped voting.
“Why not talk about the things
that we can all agree on? Daylight
saving time is the perfect issue for
that,” said Yates, a Democrat run-
ning in a crowded primary to
challenge Rep. Lauren Boebert
(R-Colo.) in the fall. “It’s under-
standable, it affects your dailyhealth problems will arise if the
country permanently divorces
our schedules from our natural
circadian clocks. One study notes
our bodies never adjust to day-
light saving time, reducing our
sleep by 19 minutes per night
until standard time is restored.
So far, 19 states have passed
bills to switch to year-round day-
light saving time, should Con-
gress allow it, according to the
National Conference of State Leg-
islatures. An additional 22 are
considering it this year.
“It wasn’t something I scram-
bled the halls getting votes for,”
Crosby said. “People hear about it,
and it makes sense.”
The proposals often call for
states to move in tandem — New
England or the Mid-Atlantic re-
gion, for example — collectively
springing forward in March and
never falling back in autumn.
Other states, such as Florida,
would make the permanent
switch alone as soon as the feder-
al Uniform Time Act of 1966 is
amended to allow it.
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and
Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who
agree on little else, have jointly
sponsored legislation to let states
permanently reset the clocks to
daylight saving time.
Grumbling about the time
change has stretched back dec-
TIME FROM B1
Changing clocks could be thing of past
dents walking to bus stops in the
dark during the shortest days of
winter and muddle efforts to de-
lay school start times aligned
with decades of research showing
that high-schoolers need more
sleep.
The Maryland bill, which
would only take effect if D.C.,
Virginia and other Mid-Atlantic
states adopted similar measures,
now heads to the state Senate. It
died there last year, languishing
without a vote in one of the
legislature’s busiest committees,
which at the time was attempting
to pass a sweeping climate
change bill.Pea and his allies argue that if
states want to stop switching
their clocks, which his organiza-
tion wholeheartedly supports,
science and human biology dic-
tates leaving the clock on stan-
dard time, not an hour ahead. The
organization cites a number of
sleep studies about the cumula-
tive sleep deficits from decou-
pling our daily social lives from
the position of the sun. Our body’s
cellular clocks, they argue, can’t
change.
School officials have been re-
luctant to embrace the shift, too.
Anne Arundel County’s school
system said it would leave stu-ELISE AMENDOLA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Maryland is one of many states across the country that have
advanced proposals to make daylight saving time permanent.BY ELLIE SILVERMAN
AND EMILY DAVIESA rally in D.C. against pandem-
ic-related restrictions and in sup-
port of the self-styled “Freedom
Convoy” that occupied downtown
Ottawa for weeks drew a few doz-
en people, many of whom were
journalists, near the Washington
Monument on Tuesday afternoon.
Rally organizer Kyle Sefcik, a
Gaithersburg man who is running
in the Maryland gubernatorial
race as an unaffiliated candidate,
decried public health measures
such as mask-wearing and vac-
cine mandates. He also acknowl-
edged the small turnout.
“With the millions of hits, the
hundreds of thousands of people
that are behind the movement,
there’s still not people showing up
and being about it,” Sefcik said.
But he said he was undeterred: “I
needed these cameras here be-
cause... this is the message that I
need to get out.”
His complaints, and those of
other mandate protesters, comeas many pandemic restrictions
have been blocked or eased. In the
District, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser
(D) has lifted the requirement for
residents to show proof of vacci-
nation to enter most businesses.
Officials in parts of the Washing-
ton region are removing indoor
mask mandates, and the Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion recently eased mask recom-
mendations.
The Secret Service and other
federal and local authorities were
preparing for possible demon-strations and disruptions ahead
of President Biden’s State of the
Union address Tuesday night,
with heightened security mea-
sures including temporary fenc-
ing around the Capitol. By late
afternoon, however, no disrup-
tions had occurred.
The possibility of a caravan of
trucks and other vehicles headed
to the region has heightened secu-
rity, drawing in police agencies
from Maryland and Virginia to
monitor the Beltway. At a Tuesday
news briefing, D.C. Police ChiefRobert J. Contee III called the
increased safety measures pre-
cautionary.
Sefcik tried to launch his own
D.C.-bound convoy from Los An-
geles last week, but it soon dis-
solved. He told the people gath-
ered Tuesday to support other
convoys headed toward the na-
tion’s capital.
The “People’s Convoy,” a
U.S.-based group of activists also
opposed to vaccine mandates, is
on a cross-country trip aiming to
arrive in the Washington regionon Saturday. Organizers say they
intend to target the Beltway but
not travel into the city. It’s not
clear what their plans are once
they arrive.
Hundreds of D.C. National
Guard personnel and 50 large
tactical units are also authorized
to assist with traffic control dur-
ing First Amendment demonstra-
tions expected in the city in the
coming days.Peter Hermann and Julie Zauzmer
Weil contributed to this report.THE DISTRICT
T urnout low for gathering to protest mask and vaccination mandates
Call for a FREE Estimate888-670-4342 | HarryHelmet.com*Offer expires 3/31/22. Valid on initial visit only. Min. purchase required. Cannot be combined with other offers. †Subject to credit approval. Ask for details. NMLS #1416362. MD MHIC #48622 - VA #2705036173 - DC#420218000007 Licensed, Bonded, Insured. © 2022 Lednor CorporationNever Clean Your Gutters Again!
®
Senior & Military DiscountsPre-Spring MarchMania SalePre-SpPre-Spring March ring MarchManiaMania S Saleale50% Installation50% Installation
+10% Entire Job+10% Entire Job
Eliminates clogged gutters,keeps debris and animals outPatented nose forward design,no vertical openingsP atented hi-performance,anti-corrosive, multi-layer finishOnly product tested to handleup to 22” of rain per hourInstalls on and reinforcesexisting guttersA pproved by all major roofingmanufacturersBefore AfterFinancing Available
Financing Available††
0%0%