The good news, if you are the sort of person who finds good news in federal timekeeping, is that Congress is very close to locking the clocks. No more springing forward. No more falling back. The sun will rise at the same hour forever, or at least until the next session. Progress.
The less good news, if you are a Muslim whose Fajr prayer begins at dawn, or an Orthodox Jew whose Shabbat ends when three stars appear, is that your religious schedule is pegged to the actual sun — a celestial body that has not, to date, filed the necessary paperwork to participate in the Sunshine Protection Act. The sun rises when it rises. Congress has noted this and chosen to interpret it as insubordination.
The specific complaint — raised in good faith by religious communities whose daily obligations are literally timed to sunrise and sunset — is that locking the clocks to permanent daylight saving time in northern latitudes means the legal morning and the astronomical morning diverge by an hour or more for several months of the year. Fajr, for instance, could fall in the legal middle of the night. The workday, the school day, and the commute would all begin before the sun has been notified. This is not a theological quibble. It is a scheduling conflict between Washington and the solar system, and Washington has a narrower margin for error here than it thinks.
Now, the obvious solution — permanent standard time, which keeps legal clocks closer to the sun — has been available the whole time. Several chronobiologists, sleep researchers, and, one presumes, anyone who has looked out a window in December have pointed this out. Permanent standard time was right there. Congress looked at it, picked the other one, and called it the Sunshine Protection Act, which is the kind of name you give legislation when you would like credit for something you cannot actually deliver.
Protecting sunshine. From whom, exactly? The night? The night has never held a committee hearing, never lobbied a single senator, and yet here we are, passing acts against it. Meanwhile, the sun continues to operate on its original schedule, indifferent to the gavel, unimpressed by the vote count, and rising, as it always has, at precisely the moment Congress told it not to.