During the heat wave, New York Mayor Mamdani posted a short piece of guidance: set your air conditioner to 78 degrees, turn off lights and electronics you are not using, and unplug what you can, to ease the strain on the power grid [1]. On Fox News, Jesse Watters had a verdict. 'This is how communism starts,' he said. 'They start rationing things' [2]. Representative Brandon Gill and Dave Portnoy chimed in with socialism and communism [1].
Whether asking people to nudge the thermostat is good leadership is a matter of opinion, and anyone is free to think it is nannying or pointless. That is not what is being claimed here. The claim is a factual one, that this is rationing, the state coercively allocating a scarce good, and that part is checkable.
It is not rationing. The guidance carried no mandate, no penalty, no enforcement, and no limit on anyone's use of electricity. It asked. People remained free to run their air conditioners at any temperature they liked [1]. Rationing is what happened with gasoline in the 1970s or sugar during the war, where the government limited how much you could buy. A mayor suggesting a thermostat setting is the opposite of that: a request with no teeth.
The request itself is also routine. Utilities across the country issue voluntary conservation appeals during peak demand and heat waves, asking customers to raise the thermostat and delay heavy appliance use so the grid can hold. It is one of the ordinary tools that keeps the lights on when everyone's air conditioner runs at once. Labeling a standard grid-conservation ask as the onset of communism does not describe the policy. It describes the label. The policy was a suggestion to save some power on a hot day.
