WASHINGTON, D.C. In a stunning display of bipartisan unity not seen since the great “Pizza is a Vegetable” compromise of 2011, progressive activists have thrown their full support behind President Trump’s campaign to eliminate daylight saving time. However, their reasoning has left political analysts scratching their heads and reaching for industrial-strength aspirin.
While Trump’s opposition to DST centers on economic efficiency and general annoyance, progressive groups have discovered what they’re calling the “mathematical violence” inherent in forcing Americans to calculate time differences twice yearly.
“We’ve finally found something we can agree with Trump on, but obviously not for his capitalist reasons,” explained Dr. Harmony Moonbeam-Johnson, Director of Temporal Justice at the Institute for Chronological Equity. “Our research clearly shows that requiring people to add or subtract one hour twice a year disproportionately impacts communities that have been historically excluded from mathematical education.”
The revelation came during a three-hour virtual symposium titled “Time Change = Brain Drain: How Daylight Saving Perpetuates Numerical Supremacy.” The event, attended by dozens of activists via Zoom squares decorated with solidarity fists and analog clocks, laid out the progressive case against what they’ve termed “compulsory temporal mathematics.”
“Every spring and fall, we’re literally forcing millions of Americans to perform mental arithmetic just to know what time it is,” said activist Trevor Kale-Smoothie, adjusting his “Math is Violence” t-shirt. “This creates a twice-yearly barrier that excludes anyone who struggles with basic addition and subtraction from full participation in society.”
The movement gained momentum when researchers at UC Berkeley’s Center for Mathematical Justice released a study showing that daylight saving transitions require citizens to perform an estimated 4.2 billion individual calculations annually. “That’s 4.2 billion moments of mathematical coercion,” the study concluded, “disproportionately affecting communities where traditional Western arithmetic has been imposed through educational colonialism.”
Progressive social media exploded with testimonials from Americans sharing their “temporal math trauma.” Instagram influencer @DecolonizeTime posted a viral TikTok showing herself crying while trying to figure out if her phone had automatically updated, garnering 2.3 million views and 847,000 comments of solidarity.
“I shouldn’t have to do math to know what time it is,” she sobbed into her ring light. “Time is a human right, not a word problem.”
The Alliance for Numerical Liberation quickly organized protests outside clock stores nationwide, with demonstrators carrying signs reading “Stop Clock-Blocking Communities” and “Our Ancestors Told Time by the Sun, Not Subtraction.” One particularly memorable chant emerged from the Berkeley demonstration: “Hey hey, ho ho, temporal arithmetic has got to go!”
Congressional Progressive Caucus members were quick to embrace the cause. Representative Zara Progressive-Martinez announced plans to introduce the “Chronological Accessibility Act,” which would mandate that all time changes be performed automatically by technology, eliminating human mathematical intervention.
“No American should be forced to choose between knowing the correct time and avoiding mathematical trauma,” she declared at a press conference held precisely at 2:00 PM to avoid any time-related confusion. “We’re talking about basic temporal equity here.”
The movement has attracted support from unexpected quarters. The National Association of People Who Are Bad at Math issued a statement calling DST “a twice-yearly reminder of our society’s addiction to numerical problem-solving.” Local chapters have organized “Math-Free Time Zones” where volunteers help community members navigate clock changes without requiring personal arithmetic.
Dr. Moonbeam-Johnson’s research team has identified several specific ways that daylight saving time perpetuates what they call “chrono-mathematical oppression”:
The biannual requirement to determine whether clocks “spring forward” or “fall back” forces citizens to memorize directional mathematics, privileging those with spatial-temporal learning advantages. The need to calculate arrival times across time zone changes during DST transitions creates “compounded mathematical burden” for travelers. Small businesses must perform inventory math while simultaneously adjusting for time changes, creating what researchers term “multiplicative numerical stress.”
Perhaps most controversially, the group argues that the very concept of “gaining” or “losing” an hour promotes scarcity mindset around time itself. “When we say we ‘lose’ an hour in spring, we’re literally teaching children that time can be taken from them through mathematical manipulation,” explained graduate student Sage Crystalwind. “It’s temporal gaslighting.”
The unlikely alliance has created strange bedfellows in Washington. Progressive activists found themselves nodding along as Trump tweeted, “Daylight Saving Time is costly and inconvenient,” though they quickly clarified their agreement stemmed from anti-mathematical rather than pro-business concerns.
“Yes, we agree with Trump, but our reasons are completely different and much more enlightened,” explained Moonbeam-Johnson. “He wants to eliminate DST because it hurts corporate profits. We want to eliminate it because it forces marginalized communities to perform oppressive calculations twice a year.”
The movement has faced criticism from some unexpected sources. The National Council of Mathematics Teachers issued a statement suggesting that perhaps the solution was better math education rather than eliminating all situations requiring basic arithmetic. This prompted immediate backlash from progressive activists, who accused the organization of “perpetuating computational colonialism.”
“They’re literally suggesting we solve mathematical oppression with more mathematics,” tweeted @ResistAlgebra. “That’s like suggesting we solve racism with more racism. The cognitive dissonance is real.”
Republican strategists remain baffled by their newfound progressive allies. “We wanted to eliminate daylight saving time because it’s stupid and annoying,” said GOP consultant Brad Traditionsman. “They want to eliminate it because math is racist. I mean, we’ll take the votes, but this is getting weird.”
As the unlikely coalition builds momentum, political observers are left wondering what other issues might unite progressives and conservatives through completely incompatible reasoning. Early speculation includes potential alliance on eliminating standardized testing (conservatives: government overreach; progressives: mathematical violence) and opposition to self-checkout machines (conservatives: job losses; progressives: forced consumer arithmetic).
At press time, Dr. Moonbeam-Johnson was reportedly working on her next research project: proving that leap years constitute “calendrical oppression” by forcing citizens to remember that February sometimes has 29 days, which she describes as “weaponized temporal mathematics designed to exclude communities with non-Western counting traditions.”
The Trump administration has not yet responded to requests for comment about their new progressive allies, though sources close to the president report he was overheard muttering, “I just wanted to stop changing the clocks twice a year. How did this become about racist math?”
