Read here: George Gerbo and Kerry Picket talk NRA’s waning influence and energy-hungry data centers

George Gerbo: Hi, I’m George Gerbo and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events. And joining me once again is our White House correspondent and author of our Advocates column looking in the voices and players that shape Washington, Kerry Picket. Kerry, it’s good to see you.

Kerry Picket: Thanks for having me, George.

George Gerbo: Absolutely. Let’s start in Virginia, where as Governor Abigail Spanberger now fully sworn in and Democrats controlling both chambers in the Virginia House and the Virginia Senate, now Democrats looking to advance gun control measures. At least 40 have been introduced so far here early in the legislative session in Richmond, specifically prohibitions on guns that are considered assault weapons, a limit on magazine capacities to 10 rounds, and expanded civil liability for the gun industry. It’s a big push, Kerry, to go right off the jump after taking over for Republican Glenn Youngkin and to note Virginia governors are limited to a single term so that’s why we’ve gone from Youngkin now and Spanberger just being elected in November, sworn in just this January, but a big push by Democrats now that they control all three levers of power in Richmond to try to enact even stricter gun control measures than the state has previously seen.

Kerry Picket: That’s right, George. You have Virginia lawmakers in the House of Delegates and on the Senate side they have full control, as you mentioned, and they have already passed a good tranche of at least about 40 pieces of legislation that have been proposed in both chambers, many of which are companion bills, so they essentially mirror each other in both chambers. But what we’ve seen so far have been one particular significant bill that has been passed in the House and has also just been a similar companion bill that’s been passed in the Senate that would ban certain semi-automatic firearms that are deemed quote-unquote assault firearms. These include many semi-automatic rifles and pistols and many within the gun community like to really grill those in the gun control side what exactly is an assault firearm. Well, in Virginia statute they define that as a semi-automatic centerfire rifle or pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material and is equipped at the time of the offense with a magazine that will hold more than 20 rounds of ammunition or is designed by the manufacturer to accommodate a silencer or equipped with a folding stock. Now that’s a lot of wording there, but still it’s important to keep that in mind because that essentially really brings in pretty much most semi-automatic firearms, whether it’s a pistol or a rifle. And at that point you also have to remember that even though one may not be a felon, the moment this bill goes into effect, you have to remember that you’re going to have people who will be charged with a misdemeanor if they end up having these firearms once you have people who end up showing them to law enforcement at the wrong time. So this bill ended up passing 58 to 34 within the House of Delegates. Now House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, he said, look, this bill along with all the others that passed the House of Delegates, he said this is a lawyer’s dream. This is completely unconstitutional according to the Supreme Court. And the moment any of these bills are signed by Abigail Spanberger, they are going to be challenged. I spoke to a number of gun advocates and they said they have their lawsuits pending and they are going to challenge them the moment they are signed by Abigail Spanberger.

George Gerbo: Let’s stay in the firearms space. It’s a good transition to a story you wrote recently about the National Rifle Association and how they’ve kind of been on a quest trying to figure out their place now in this political environment in 2026, just two years after former president Wayne LaPierre was forced to resign over a civil trial, civil fraud trial that he was involved in. Now the organization which for a lot of years, Kerry, carried big sway among conservatives specifically and became a target for Democrats as well to direct their ire at, but it seems to have lost some of its political heft and might in this new political environment we’re under in this second Trump administration and also specifically as you wrote about there’s a little bit of a fracture, warring factions between the charitable arm of the NRA as well as its main organization.

Kerry Picket: Yeah, the National Rifle Association is really trying to pick itself up after it dealt with some legal blows over the past few years that started with the Attorney General of New York Letitia James after dealing with some fraud issues. Particularly you had Wayne LaPierre who headed up the NRA previously. The jury found him liable for about 5.4 million dollars damages because of financial mismanagement including using NRA funds for private jets, luxury vacations and personal expenses. But after all of that, or rather even before this could go to trial, Wayne LaPierre resigned even before that could happen. But the NRA wanted to start anew. So you had one faction of the NRA who were Wayne LaPierre supporters. They went off and said, hey, we’re grabbing the foundation which is the charitable arm. And you had the NRA in and of itself who said we’re starting off with a completely new board and if any of you are Wayne LaPierre supporters, you guys can take a hike. So they have been fighting with one another. And just several weeks ago the NRA noticed that a lot of Wayne LaPierre or rather the foundation who was full of a lot of Wayne LaPierre supporters, they were fundraising and basically using a lot of NRA logos, a lot of NRA symbols and essentially taking a lot of their donors and it’s very hard for the NRA to fundraise themselves. And so it’s been very difficult for the NRA to really put themselves out there to do its core mission. And if you noticed what I just talked about with Virginia, which is where the NRA’s headquarters, they really couldn’t raise any money for a lot of the candidates that they wanted to and so here you have people like Winsome Sears who ran against Abigail Spanberger and really got extraordinarily beaten along with other candidates who were Republicans. And the NRA only raised about 25 to 30 thousand dollars compared to you had gun control candidates who won very well. I mean they ended up raising at least about almost a million dollars for Abigail Spanberger and they raised a lot of money for other gun control candidates as well but the NRA just really couldn’t do that because they’re really on the ropes. They’re hoping to do much better in the coming weeks and hopefully the NRA and the NRA Foundation can hopefully find some sort of resolution in the meantime. You have other gun groups that are trying to start taking up the slack because in the next few weeks, the next few months, you have a lot of these gun control bills that are coming down the pipeline.

George Gerbo: Let’s wrap up with another advocacy group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute. And you can find Kerry’s coverage of the advocacy space in The Advocates each and every week at washingtontimes.com. The Competitive Enterprise Institute among other groups as you write are seeking to urge passage in the Senate of the D.A.T.A. Act which kind of unique way to benefit these data centers that we see popping up all over the country and they’re causing battles from people who don’t want them on their land and people who say that they use so much water, energy, strain on the electrical grid. This Act would allow these data centers to bypass some of the electrical grid connections and set up their own power sources that are separate from the grid. Is that correct?

Kerry Picket: That’s right. It would allow data centers to bypass federal energy regulations to encourage the centers to build their own independent off-grid power supplies. The initiative is anticipated to support AI infrastructure development and establish a quote-unquote consumer regulated electric utilities or CREUs. Yeah, look these AI data centers just eat up so much energy. And what the Competitive Enterprise Institute, even Cato, another libertarian organization among others and also other right-of-center organizations, they want to make sure that these utilities or rather that these data centers don’t become shall we say used for power like don’t eat energy off a power center they don’t become utilities so then people aren’t charged an extraordinarily amount. They just don’t want to see a lot of government intervention into this when it comes to a power source. They would rather see a more privatized solution more than anything else because these AI data centers are going to be just eating up so much energy. So it would be basically protecting customers in an off-grid power system that would allow for the speed and innovation that today’s grid really sorely lacks.

George Gerbo: It seems like there’s always something going on in the advocacy space. We know that you’ll have it covered for us. Kerry, I appreciate the time. Thanks so much.

Kerry Picket: Sure thing. Thank you. Take care.

George Gerbo: You can find The Advocates and all of Kerry’s work online at washingtontimes.com and on social media. I’m George Gerbo. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.