During a July 2026 heatwave, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani posted on X urging residents to set their thermostats to 78 degrees and cut energy use. The advice drew mockery from Republicans, until reporters pointed out that the Trump administration's own Department of Energy was recommending the same thing.
As of a June 19, 2026 snapshot, the DOE's website advised homeowners to “set thermostats as high as comfortable” in summer, citing 75 to 78 degrees for daytime use “for energy efficiency.” A day after reporters noted the disconnect between the GOP's ridicule of Mamdani and the government's identical guidance, the page disappeared.
The deletion was not limited to a single page. According to an analysis by the Internet Archive, the DOE removed as many as 6,000 web pages covering energy-conservation topics, including water conservation, residential insulation, and the department's Solar Decathlon program. Scrubbing accurate, practical government guidance in the middle of a dangerous heatwave, apparently to avoid the embarrassment of agreeing with a political opponent, trades public information for a news-cycle save.
The scrubbing continued into the next heatwave. A Guardian analysis of deleted URLs provided by Internet Archive researchers found that at least 1,662 Energy Department webpages offering guidance on protecting the electrical grid during heatwaves had gone dark as of July 3, 2026, just as millions of Americans prepared for another stretch of brutal heat. The Guardian found the removals coincided with the administration's push to weaken efficiency rules, and placed them in a broader pattern of scrubbing federal information that conflicts with its priorities.