Republican senator renews push to make daylight savings permanent

As Americans pushed their clocks forward an hour Sunday to implement daylight savings, US senator James Lankford doubled down on his commitment to eliminating seasonal time changes, saying he wanted to abandon what he described as an antiquated first world war convention.

The Republican lawmaker from Oklahoma said he was devoted to proverbially locking the clock through his Sunshine Act, which unanimously passed in the Senate but was not taken up by the House. Speaking with CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper on Sunday, Lankford said he wanted to “start the dialogue” back up partly because of an encounter with a military veteran who seemed to view ending daylight savings time as a dying wish.

“As funny as this sounds, several years ago, I was walking in a Veterans Day parade, and a veteran … that was watching the parade, an older gentleman, gets up from his lawn chair – he actually walks into the parade route, shook my hand and said: ‘Before I die, would you end daylight savings time?’” Lankford recounted.

“Of all the things I thought you would say to me today, that is not what I thought you would say,” Lankford recalled telling the veteran. “He said: ‘I hate it. I’m in my 80s. I want you to get rid of daylight savings time before I die.’”

The politician said he assured the veteran he had a bill with fellow Republican US senator Marco Rubio to eliminate a time change that he said was “a relic” of the first world war, when the government wanted to add daylight hours to conserve energy.

“We want to be able to lock this clock,” Lankford said to Tapper. “A lot of people are annoyed by it … Let’s actually flick our lights on, and we can do this.”

Lankford alluded to how Arizona had chosen to stop moving its clocks up an hour in