Zohran Mamdani told New Yorkers on Wednesday to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees as the city faced a multi-day stretch of extreme heat. He paired the request with a broader plea to cut power use, saying the grid was working overtime and needed help to stay stable.
The message landed in the middle of a holiday-weekend heat wave, when cooling demand can spike fast and every degree matters. Mamdani said residents should turn off lights and electronics they were not using, unplug what they could and follow the same 78-degree approach the city said it was using in its own buildings.
That is why the post spread so quickly. People were not just reacting to a thermostat setting; they were reacting to the idea that New York was asking households to help manage the city’s electricity load in real time. Mamdani said the city was dimming and turning off lights during peak demand, asking private partners to do the same and powering down non-essential equipment.
The push was not out of step with federal guidance. Recent advice from the Department of Energy suggests starting air conditioning between 75 and 78 degrees, a range that puts Mamdani’s 78-degree request at the warm end of the recommended band. He framed the message as a practical way to keep cooling systems running, saying a stable grid means the AC stays on and lives are saved.
Republicans seized on the post within hours. Vivek Ramaswamy called it “what socialism looks like,” Nikki Haley wrote, “Welcome to socialism,” Ted Cruz mocked the advice by saying, “In a first-world country, you could turn on the A/C,” and Dave Portnoy blasted it as “communism.” One of those jabs was undercut by a community note on Cruz’s post, which said Texas has also asked residents to set their AC units to 78 degrees in the past.
That back-and-forth gets to the real split in the story. Mamdani presented the request as a conservation measure during extreme weather, but critics treated it as a political symbol, turning a grid-management appeal into a fight over ideology. What remains unclear is not the message, but the load behind it: the city said the grid needed relief, yet it did not quantify how much strain it was actually under when the request went out.
For now, the practical answer is simple. New Yorkers are being asked to sweat a little more, use a little less electricity and get through the heat without pushing the system over the edge.
