timezone is set to EST but date returned in UTC

Issue

• System is incorrectly showing time and date in UTC when running date command while timezone is set to EST.

[root@rhel7 ~]# timedatectl
Warning: Ignoring the TZ variable. Reading the system's time zone setting only.

      Local time: Sun 2020-03-29 20:45:55 EDT
  Universal time: Mon 2020-03-30 00:45:55 UTC
        RTC time: Mon 2020-03-30 00:45:53
       Time zone: America/New_York (EDT, -0400)
     NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: yes
 Last DST change: DST began at
                  Sun 2020-03-08 01:59:59 EST
                  Sun 2020-03-08 03:00:00 EDT
 Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at
                  Sun 2020-11-01 01:59:59 EDT
                  Sun 2020-11-01 01:00:00 EST
[root@rhel7 ~]# date
Mon Mar 30 00:46:35 UTC 2020