DOE Removed Webpage Advising Americans to Set Thermostats at 78 Degrees
A federal webpage telling Americans how to keep their homes livable during the worst heat of summer has vanished without explanation. The U.S. Department of Energy’s guidance recommending indoor temperatures of 75 to 78 degrees disappeared from its site just as extreme heat warnings stretched across 26 states. The timing raised eyebrows, since the page vanished only days after a big-city mayor pushed the same number and set off a political firestorm.
Archived versions of the DOE’s “Home Cooling Systems” page, part of its Energy Saver consumer guidance, show the advice stayed online through late June and early July. It told homeowners to “start with an indoor temperature between 75-78°F during the day” and raise it another seven degrees when nobody was home. The page also covered weatherization, window coverings and programmable thermostats. Now, typing in that same web address brings up nothing.
Visitors now get only a “Page not found” message where the guidance used to sit. Newsweek reached out to the Department of Energy asking whether the removal was intentional, whether the content moved elsewhere on the site, or whether it was pulled during a routine update. As of publication, the agency had not responded, and no public explanation has been offered for why years-old federal guidance simply disappeared.
Mamdani’s 78-Degree Appeal Draws Comparisons to Communism from GOP Senators
The disappearance came days after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told residents to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees as the National Weather Service warned of a “significant and dangerous heat wave.” Mamdani said the city was maintaining the same 78-degree rule in its own buildings, dimming nonessential lighting and asking private partners to cut back, framing the request as a way to keep the power grid stable during peak demand.
“A stable grid means the AC stays on, and lives are saved,” Mamdani said, urging New Yorkers to ease demand together as temperatures climbed toward dangerous levels. The message was aimed squarely at preventing blackouts during a heat emergency. Within hours, the recommendation became a target for critics who framed it as government overreach rather than a practical response to strained electrical infrastructure during a record-breaking summer stretch.
Conservative lawmakers pounced almost immediately. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul called it “proof that communism is (unfortunately) alive and well,” while Florida Senator Rick Scott declared, “This is Communism at work.” Texas Senator Ted Cruz mocked the idea entirely, writing that “in a first-world country, you could turn on the A/C,” a claim that overlooked his own state’s history with that exact recommendation.
Internet Archive Finds 6,000 DOE Pages Removed Alongside the 78-Degree Guidance
Cruz’s home state of Texas had made the identical request in 2015, when Governor Greg Abbott asked residents to “set air conditioning thermostats to 78 degrees or higher” to protect the grid. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who joined the mockery by asking if this was “the warmth of collectivism,” also leads a state whose own Public Service Commission recommended the same 78-degree setting as recently as June.
The 78-degree figure is not a fringe idea invented by any single official. Energy Star and the Department of Energy have promoted that range for decades as a balance between comfort and savings, a guideline tracing back to 1979, when President Jimmy Carter ordered public buildings to follow it during a national energy shortage. New York itself used the same benchmark in 1999 under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
An Internet Archive analysis found the missing thermostat page was not an isolated case. As many as 6,000 web pages referencing similar temperature recommendations and energy-conservation tips have been removed from federal sites, according to that review. A June 19 snapshot still showed the DOE instructing homeowners to set thermostats “as high as comfortable” during summer months, guidance that vanished sometime in the following weeks.
A 47-Year-Old Energy Guideline Disappears the Same Week It Went Viral
The backdrop to all of this is a heat wave the National Weather Service has called extreme and dangerous, with warnings covering 26 states and Washington, D.C. Heat index values have climbed as high as 115 degrees in parts of the country, and cities including New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington have logged record-breaking temperatures alongside power disruptions and transportation delays tied directly to the heat.
Critics who mocked Mamdani’s 78-degree suggestion have not addressed why the same number, recommended for decades by federal agencies under both parties, only became controversial once a Democratic Socialist mayor said it out loud. Nor has the Department of Energy explained why its own guidance quietly disappeared at the exact moment that number was drawing national attention, leaving the timing open to interpretation rather than confirmation.
No evidence has surfaced tying the removal directly to Mamdani’s comments, and the agency has offered no timeline for restoring the page or replacing it with updated guidance. What remains on record is simpler: a temperature recommendation that outlived four presidents, one energy crisis and multiple heat waves disappeared from a government website in the same week it became a political talking point.