The US Department of Energy has reportedly deleted roughly 6,000 web pages about energy conservation. The timing? A historic heatwave is tearing across the country right now.
Suspicious? Yeah.
The deletions came right after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to ease strain on the grid. Republicans — including Ted Cruz (who fled Texas during its 2021 winter storm), Nikki Haley, and Nancy Mace — jumped on it. They called it socialism. They called it a war on women in menopause. The usual stuff.
Here’s the thing: setting your thermostat to 75-78 degrees during a heatwave is basic advice. It’s been the Department of Energy’s official recommendation for years. Republican governors in Texas have said the same thing — including Greg Abbott. The selective outrage is hard to take seriously.
The deletions aren’t targeted. They swept up pages about water conservation, insulation types, and the solar decathlon challenge too. The Internet Archive has backups, but the official .gov pages are gone.
New York City just hit 95+ degrees for four straight days — two of those over 100. That kind of heat crushes the electrical grid, especially over a holiday weekend when more people are home. Asking people to bump the thermostat to 78 isn’t about politics. It’s about preventing blackouts that leave people without AC entirely.
Extreme heat kills more Americans every year than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined. That’s from CDC and NOAA data. Not opinions.
Deleting energy-saving information during a heatwave is a choice. Not a smart one.
