New York Times:
Why Some Orthodox Jews Oppose Permanent Daylight Saving Time
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/nyregion/daylight-saving-time-jewish.html
On 2026-07-30 07:22 PM, Tim Parenti wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2026 at 18:26, James Bellaire<[email protected]> wrote:
During the Senate Committee Hearing and vote on S.29 held last year
Senator Cruz noted that his amendment ("*The amendments made by
subsections (a) and (b) shall take effect on the date that is 2 years after
the date of the enactment of this Act.*") will allow states two years to
choose whether they want standard time or daylight time. Not a bad idea but
I would key it off of first Sunday of November / second Sunday of March so
passing the law late this year would not lead to a "fall back" weeks before
a "spring forward" to permanent DST.
Language to that effect would certainly be more ideal and is broadly along
the lines of what we should tend to advocate for at the drafting stage.
But given that H.R. 139 expires as a bill if not passed into law by 3
January 2027, at this point a fixed date of 7 November 2027 would likely
suffice.
Of the states which already have trigger legislation on the books that
would opt them into year-round DST if Congress chose instead to provide the
option (as yet another separate bill, H.R. 300, would do), many (though not
all) delay implementation in similar fashion, typically to the first Sunday
of November following those laws' conditions being met. Few add any other
guardrail provisions for if the conditions are met too late in the year for
ample notice.
I do not like relying on references to the law as it existed before
enactment of a new law that repealed the choice.
I agree that it feels messy and is one of several problems with this bill,
as written. I'm not a legal scholar, but I can't imagine it's the kind of
thing that makes legal interpretation any easier down the road. (Although
it certainly makes drafting the legislation easier if you don't have to
care about how to actually transition from A to B.)
Redraw the lines. Don't have two "MST" definitions (one current, one in a
footnote).
If this goes through, that might happen anyway to clean up the situation
around Arizona. The DOT could declare the state in the new "Pacific
standard time" which is equivalent to its current MST on UTC−7, possibly
drawing the line at the borders of the reservations that do currently
observe DST, assuming they would stick with the rest of the new "mountain
standard time" on UTC−6.
Doing the same for Hawaii and the territories would be harder. Sure, you
could formally put Hawaii in the new Samoan zone advanced to UTC−10, but
that'd be weird. And there'd be no new zones in the law that match many of
the other islands' existing timekeeping, so they'd just remain an hour
behind what the new law would say they "should" be. It would certainly be
cleaner to just exclude those territories from the change to begin with.
Every meeting that passes without action makes it less likely that it will
be approved by the end of the year.
On some level, this is just as well because, with each day that passes, the
potential for technical and societal complications also become greater. If
this ends up getting signed into law without amendment, arguably a
worst-case scenario would be for it to happen between November 2026 and
January 2027, as most states will have fallen back only to be legally
pushed back forward with the stroke of a pen. This is followed closely by
scenarios in which the bill is signed in late October 2026, resulting in a
short-notice change.
--
Tim Parenti
