New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani picked a fight with millions of overheated residents this week, posting on X that New Yorkers should set their air conditioners to 78 degrees while a punishing heat wave bears down on the five boroughs. The response was swift, merciless, and bipartisan in its contempt.
AccuWeather forecasts temperatures potentially hitting 100 degrees on Thursday and Friday, the first time New York City would reach that mark since 2012. Into that furnace stepped the mayor with a social media advisory that read less like crisis leadership and more like a college dorm's energy-saving poster.
The New York Post reported on the backlash, which rolled in from media figures, community leaders, and ordinary New Yorkers who had no interest in sweating through triple-digit heat on the mayor's say-so.
The mayor's post on the official @NYCMayor account laid out the ask plainly:
"New York: it's hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool. Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can."
He followed up by claiming city government would lead by example. City buildings would maintain a 78-degree rule, lights would be dimmed or shut off during peak electricity demand, and private partners would be asked to follow suit. Non-essential equipment would be powered down.
Mamdani framed the request as a matter of life and death, writing that "a stable grid means the AC stays on, and lives are saved." He closed with: "Let's ease demand, and get through the heat, together."
On paper, the logic is simple enough: if everyone cranks the AC, the grid strains, and a blackout during a heat emergency could turn dangerous fast. The Department of Energy does recommend keeping thermostats between 75 and 78 degrees during summer months.
But telling New Yorkers, crammed into aging apartments with spotty ventilation, paying some of the highest rents in America, to sit quietly at 78 degrees while the city around them cooks at 100 is a different proposition than a federal pamphlet. And the mayor's critics were happy to explain why.
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy was among the first high-profile voices to pile on. His response was characteristically blunt:
"78 degrees??? Welcome to communism people! Hope you enjoy!"
Portnoy has previously expressed openness to running against Mamdani for mayor, a detail that adds a competitive edge to the jab. For a city already watching its mayor draw fire from multiple directions, the exchange only sharpened the sense that Mamdani is losing the room.
Conservative media figure Bonchie offered a more pointed dig on X: "Do you feel the warmth of collectivism yet?" The line landed because it captured what many critics see as the deeper pattern, a mayor whose instincts run toward collective sacrifice imposed from above, not individual choice.
Moshe Spern, president of the United Jewish Teachers, posted a response that mixed New York irreverence with ideological critique:
"My Mayor is Muslim. My Bagel is Jewish. My Christian Dior. Thermostat set to 74. Or lower. Only a Communist believes distribution of wealth also means distribution of air conditioning. Send thermostat pics at Gracie and City hall please!!"
The call to send thermostat photos to Gracie Mansion and City Hall was a nice touch, a dare to see whether the mayor's own buildings are actually holding the line at 78.
The mockery wasn't confined to media personalities and organizational leaders. Unnamed New Yorkers flooded the replies with their own declarations of thermostat defiance.
One resident wrote: "As a New Yorker I'll be setting my AC to 62 degrees for the foreseeable future as a direct retaliation to your authority." Another took a more creative approach: "I have texted all my coworkers who voted for Zohran to send me a photo of their A/C set to 78."
That second response cuts to something real. When a politician asks for collective sacrifice, the first question voters ask is whether the people who put him in power are willing to follow through. The second question is whether the politician himself is.
Critics also raised the Times Square problem. The iconic intersection blazes with commercial lighting around the clock, soaking up enormous amounts of energy. Asking apartment dwellers to sweat while the city's most famous tourist attraction stays lit like a Christmas tree is a hard sell, and the mayor's post didn't address it.
Mamdani is not the first New York City mayor to make this particular request. Former Mayor Eric Adams issued a nearly identical 78-degree advisory during a heat advisory in July 2023. The advice drew criticism then, too, though the political context was different.
What makes the current episode sting more is who Mamdani is and what he represents. This is a mayor whose socialist political slate swept New York City primaries, ousting Democratic incumbents and signaling a sharp leftward shift in city governance. When a self-described democratic socialist tells you to turn down your AC for the collective good, the "communism" jokes write themselves.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who watched progressive leaders during COVID-era restrictions: officials impose sacrifice on the public while their own compliance remains unverified, and the gap between the ask and the asker's credibility widens with every news cycle.
Mamdani has built a record that makes this kind of skepticism inevitable. He has pledged defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on deportation protections, positioning himself as a mayor willing to override federal authority when it suits his politics. He has courted Wall Street titans after months of anti-billionaire rhetoric, raising questions about whether his populist posture is performance rather than principle.
Against that backdrop, asking working families to sweat through a heat wave while city bureaucrats manage the thermostat reads less like crisis management and more like the latest installment of top-down progressivism meeting street-level reality.
Lost in the social media fireworks are several questions Mamdani's post left unanswered. Is the 78-degree rule for city buildings a new Mamdani policy, or a pre-existing standard? What enforcement mechanism, if any, applies? Did the city issue a formal heat emergency declaration alongside the social media advisory, or was an X post the full extent of the response?
And perhaps most importantly: what is the actual state of New York City's power grid? If the infrastructure is genuinely fragile enough that a heat wave threatens cascading blackouts, that is a serious governance failure years in the making, one that a tweet about thermostats does nothing to fix.
The Department of Energy's recommendation of 75 to 78 degrees exists as general guidance for energy efficiency across the country. It was not designed as emergency crisis communication for a city of eight million people staring down 100-degree heat in apartments that predate air conditioning itself.
New Yorkers know the difference between a reasonable ask and a lecture. They've been lectured plenty. They pay among the highest taxes and energy costs in the nation. They ride a subway system that regularly fails them. They watch their streets grow less safe and their leaders grow more ideological. And now they're told the right temperature for their own homes.
Grid management during extreme heat is a legitimate concern. No serious person wants a citywide blackout in July. But the messenger matters, and Mamdani has spent his time in office cultivating exactly the kind of political identity that makes "set your AC to 78" sound less like practical advice and more like ideological instruction.
A mayor who backed a congressional candidate with deeply controversial views on American violence does not get the benefit of the doubt when he asks for sacrifice. Trust is earned, and Mamdani has spent his political capital on confrontation, not credibility.
The 78-degree advisory may be technically defensible. The Department of Energy says roughly the same thing. But governance is not a technical exercise. It is the art of persuading free people to cooperate, and that requires a leader whose record gives people a reason to listen.
Mamdani asked New Yorkers to turn down the AC. They turned up the volume instead. That tells you everything about where this mayor stands with the people he governs.
