On Sunday, in a long, rambling Truth Social post, President Donald Trump revealed the real reason he's been pushing for permanent Daylight Saving Time. Unsurprisingly, it's for the benefit of golf. What's more, in the same post, he doxxed a Republican senator by revealing his personal cell phone number.
"Everybody in Arkansas, [Senator] Tom Cotton (R-AK), a friend of mine, is holding up a very important Bill," posted the president. "It’s called, 'The Sunshine Protection Act' or, 'We Don’t Want to Change Our Clocks Twice a Year Act.' For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it’s very easy to do, it only takes one! It should pass overwhelmingly, in a Bipartisan fashion. So, everyone in Arkansas, a State I love, and won 3 times, the last by by 34 points, tell Tom to, GET IT DONE! It will be appreciated by all. Nobody wants to spend their precious time running all over the place, turning Clocks back twice a year and, having sunshine in the afternoon is better than early in the morning!"
Here Trump tipped his hand, revealing his actual justification for the bill: "The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments. Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work. See letter from Brian Rolapp, CEO of the PGA TOUR below. 65 percent PLUS want more sun in the afternoon, Daylight Saving Time (The way it is now!), but 100 percent don’t want to change their Clocks twice a year. They want to, as they say, 'LOCK THE CLOCK!' Who doesn’t? It’s very expensive for our Nation where you have high and dangerous steeples to reach, like on churches and municipal buildings. Almost everybody wants 'The Sunshine Protection Act' to pass, except for Tom Cotton. To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself. Call Tom on his cellphone..." The president went on to reveal what he asserts is Cotton's actual phone number.
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During the morning, I mean. When the morning comes earlier, in theory the farmer that started at sunrise can get everything done at an earlier hour and be able to, like, go to the bank or whatever. Like I said, it's dumb, but slightly less dumb than "farmers get to work earlier.
That said, though, I don't see how we could have "thinner" time zones. If you divide a 360-degree sphere into 24 equal arcs, you're kind of stuck with 15-degree time zones, give or take. I guess we could redefine an hour to be 40 minutes, and thus have 36 ten-degree time zones, but that seems like a lot of work. And time zones that aren't an hour apart are madness.
Yeah, public transit would fix this pretty nicely. That plus a shorter workday, and a commensurate shorter school day.
I'd buy that any of that mattered if our time zone borders were straight vertical lines, but they aren't. The time zone borders are wonky as hell already. Also, we have 25 time zones currently (-12h through +12h with 0h in the middle), and there are exceptions all over the place. There are places that are +13h and +14h, there are 30m and 45m changes, etc.
We don't need the whole world to redefine an hour for us to go from 4 time zones to 6. We could have extreme east and west regions joining with their nearest oceanic time zones to give us a broader range of times and then re-align the interior regions in a way that makes as much sense as possible and probably be in a much better place.
edit: Also, I don't really know why I am doing such a deep dive into time zones, I really don't care that much personally. All my clocks change themselves basically, and my commute is going to be in the dark all winter anyway...