A Washington congresswoman is pointing the finger at daylight saving time for her son’s recent mishap in which he incurred a bad bloody nose, using the incident as a springboard to do away with the semiannual changing of the clocks altogether.
“My kid just got his first gusher bloody nose. Thank you Daylight Savings Time for this annual rug pull,” Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 37, perplexingly wrote on X and Facebook Sunday.
“And it’s not just about tired kids bumping into s–t – research shows car and other accidents spike in the days and weeks following the time change,” she wrote, a reference to some disputed studies that show such an uptick, though allegedly it mostly applies to the “spring ahead” time change in March.
“Nothing personal against Ben Franklin, but it’s TIME to stop changing the clocks twice a year,” she concluded, apparently referencing an apocryphal story that the founding father started the practice.
“Let’s just stop doing it because people are getting hurt, and it’s not just kids roughhousing, like, we need to stop. Thanks!” she said in a video accompanying the post.
Daylight saving time was enacted in the US by the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time within the nation’s five time zones and established dates and times for changing the clocks twice a year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
However legislative efforts have since been launched to make daylight saving time permanent, including a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act that passed the Senate in 2022 but stalled in the House and never became law.
Another version of the bill was introduced in January, with 30 bipartisan cosponsors, but has languished in committee ever since.
In 1974 daylight saving time was actually made year-round for a brief period via the Emergency Daylight Savings Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973. However it was repealed less than a year later after a public outcry.
President Trump himself has pushed repeatedly for lawmakers to do away with the changing of the clocks, calling the practice a “big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!” in a Truth Social post from April.
A spokesperson for Gluesenkamp Perez told The Post in response to an inquiry about how, precisely, “Daylight Savings Time” was to blame for her son’s bloody nose, “The video speaks for itself. Parents of young kids will understand how daylight savings throws kids off of their routines which makes them more tired and accident-prone.”
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