Abigail Spanberger signed a ban on your AR-15 in May. By June, her Senate budget chief had a new $1.2 billion tax on Northern Virginia ready to pass.
One party. One session. Your rifle and your wallet.
Ken Cuccinelli is fighting the first half in court. The former attorney general walked into a Spotsylvania courtroom this month to stop the gun ban, litigating Curtis v. Katz for the Second Amendment Foundation.
SAF has agreed to help support former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in a challenge to the state’s newly passed “assault weapons” ban.
— SAF (@2AFDN) June 16, 2026
In May, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law a ban on so-called “assault firearms” declaring that “…any person who… pic.twitter.com/FbZaoWj2NN
Fairfax watched the budget stall all spring — a trifecta that couldn’t pass a budget while it feuded over whether to tax data centers, the server farms spreading across Fairfax and Loudoun.
On June 22 the feud ended. The Senate voted 23-16, the House 71-22, to pass a $205 billion budget — data-center tax included.
The tax is a first in the nation: $0.011 per kilowatt-hour on the power those centers burn — roughly $1.2 billion over two years, pulled from the industry that anchors Northern Virginia’s tax base.
Senate budget chair Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) wasn’t shy about the haul. “We have heard the people and we are responding,” she declared.
Read that line again. Translation: they found $1.2 billion of your power costs to spend, and they’d like a thank-you.
A tax on a data center doesn’t stay on the data center. It rides the grid — into the rates and the cost base of every Northern Virginia household and small business already stretched thin.
The trifecta’s other signature law came for your rights. Spanberger signed the assault-weapons ban on May 14 — SB749 and HB217, carried by Fairfax’s own Del. Dan Helmer (D-HD-10) and State Sen. Saddam Salim (D-SD-37).
The bill’s author isn’t hiding the ball:
As a gun owner and Army veteran, I know military-style weapons don't belong in our communities.
— Dan Helmer (@HelmerVA) June 12, 2026
That's why I spent the last seven years fighting to pass Virginia's Assault Weapons Ban. This law will save lives and make our families and communities safer. pic.twitter.com/eHZmzB6qVE
It bans the sale of AR-15-style rifles and magazines over 15 rounds beginning July 1. Cuccinelli and the Second Amendment Foundation sued to stop it on the Virginia Constitution’s militia clause.
On June 19, a Spotsylvania judge declined to block the ban before it takes effect. Attorney General Jay Jones (D) didn’t wait to celebrate — the ruling, he said, is “an important step” toward the ban taking effect July 1.
Virginia’s top law-enforcement officer cheered a court for clearing the path to charge law-abiding gun owners. Thirteen elected prosecutors had already refused to enforce it.
Democrats hold the Governor’s office, the Senate, and the House. No Republican veto. No divided chamber. Nothing between them and your wallet or your rifle but themselves.
Lucas got her tax. Helmer and Salim got their ban. Jones got his ruling. Spanberger signed the budget. They did all of it themselves.
The only people pushing back are in a Spotsylvania courtroom and the legislative minority — outnumbered, outvoted, the last check left.
Helmer and Salim are on the ballot in November 2027. Spanberger, Lucas, and Jones answer in 2029 — though Spanberger, term-limited, won’t be on it. Fairfax gets to decide whether a government that controls everything can be trusted with all of it.