Trump Admin Appears to Delete Air Conditioner Guidance Amid Right-Wing Freakout

Good morning. Hope you had a good holiday weekend. Here are a few stories TPM is following heading into this week…

What Freedom Truly Means

Heading into a very hot weekend, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani advised city residents to set their thermostats to 78 degrees, part of an effort to avoid overtaxing the power grid. 

Naturally, right-wing influencers and MAGA activists were appalled that Mamdani would attack New Yorkers’ freedom in this way ahead of America’s 250th birthday. 

“This is what socialism looks like, folks,” declared Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor in Ohio. “First AOC tried to come for your steak and ribs and now the Socialist Democrats are coming for your AC,” intoned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “Welcome to socialism, where the government demands you turn your house into a sauna,” said Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX). (Has Gill ever been in a sauna?)

Of course, if the 78 degrees guidance sounds familiar, it’s because it is nothing new. Mayors Bill DeBlasio and Eric Adams also gave it, as did governor Kathy Hochul. 

And so did the federal Department of Energy. 

Or, at least, it did. Those web pages seem to have been deleted at some point in the last few days. The Internet Archive appears to show the DOE advising readers to set “an indoor temperature between 75-78°F during the day” on a page that was live as of July 2, the day after Mamdani’s tweet. It was, according to Internet Archive screenshots, gone by July 3. We’ve asked the DOE what happened here.

Paul LePage Makes His Return

A TPM person of interest going back more than a decade now, Paul LePage, the former governor of Maine, has a good chance of landing in Congress next year. 

• LePage is one of a few politicians who gets described, accurately, as “Trump before Trump” — words he himself has used. In fact, reviewing some of his bizarre and extreme comments — and insistence that any mistakes were actually not mistakes at all but intentional, perfect choices — LePage, at 77, feels like a forerunner of today’s politics, not a blast from the past. 
• Now he’s running in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) is retiring. He’s facing Matt Dunlap (D), the former secretary of state and current state auditor. 
• Though the district has been represented by Golden, a centrist Democrat, since 2019, it leans conservative. Cook Political Report has it as an R+4. 
• Which is all to say, we may soon see LePage leading a new political life in a party that has come to reflect in his image. 

Tabs

Mallory McMorrow, one of three candidates running in Michigan’s Democratic primary for Senate, announced on Sunday that she would be suspending her campaign. 

Tucker Carlson in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review claims he will help create a third party — “there’s going to be a third party, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring that about” — but that he doesn’t want to be a candidate. 

Trump called the president of FIFA and asked him to review the suspension of the team’s top goal scorer in the World Cup, Folarin Balogun. Balogun’s suspension was reversed Sunday.

Man of the Hour

It’s Mike Johnson, coming into the week claiming he will push to pass the SAVE America voter suppression legislation through the budget reconciliation process, an idea that has been floated many times, but that is unworkable for a number of reasons, including the Senate Parliamentarian’s objections and a growing number of GOP’s senators’ insistence that their party does not have the votes for it.