Acknowledging that “we’ve been getting our butts kicked for years now by the Republicans on voter registration,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Tuesday announced the DNC will spend millions of dollars to get “back in the game.”

Martin said that the newly created “When We Count” initiative, which he described as the party’s “largest ever voter registration effort … will train hundreds of fellows throughout the country to register tens of thousands of new voters in communities across the country.”

The announcement by the DNC, in what Martin called an “all hands on deck moment,” comes in the wake of massive voter registration gains by Republicans in recent years and ahead of November’s midterms, when Democrats aim to win back majorities in the House and Senate and a whopping 36 states hold elections for governor.

“For too long, Democrats have ceded ground to Republicans on registering voters,” Martin pointed out. “Between 2020 and ’24 alone, our party lost a combined 2.1 million registered voters. Meanwhile, Republicans gained 2.4 million voters.”

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The latest example is North Carolina, where new State Board of Elections data indicated that Republicans officially surpassed Democrats in voter registration for the first time in the crucial southeastern battleground state’s history.

Martin said a key reason for the Democrats’ deficit is that “Republicans have invested heavily in targeted partisan registration” to mobilize and grow their base of voters.

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But he lamented that “on the left” voter registration for decades has largely been led by nonpartisan advocacy organizations and civic “which limits their ability to engage in partisan conversations about registering as a Democrat.”

Martin said the new effort “is going to require everyone,” including the national, state and local parties, as well as outside groups and political campaigns, “participating in this critical work.”

Pointing to the sweeping ballot box successes by President Donald Trump and the GOP in the 2024 elections, when Republicans won back the White House and Senate and held onto their House majority, Martin said “we can’t just assume that certain demographics, whether they be young voters, voters of color or otherwise, will automatically support the Democratic Party. We have to earn every registration so that we can earn every vote.”

The DNC’s seven-figure initiative, which Martin said would kick off in the western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, “puts our national party and local parties back in the game. When we count, we’ll begin to chip away at the Republican advantage as we prepare to organize everywhere and win everywhere in 2026.”

The DNC, as it ramps up to this year’s midterm elections, also faces a formidable fundraising deficit compared to the rival Republican National Committee (RNC).

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RNC Communications Director Zach Parkinson, pointing to the DNC’s campaign cash problems, charged in a statement to Fox News Digital that “Ken Martin has driven the DNC into debt, overseen anemic fundraising.”

“We at the RNC think he’s the perfect person to oversee Democrats voter registration efforts,” Parkinson added, in a shot at the DNC chair.

WASHINGTON — Twelve House Democrats who last year sued the Trump administration over a policy limiting congressional oversight of immigrant detention facilities returned to federal court Monday to challenge a second, new policy imposing further limits on such unannounced visits.

In December, those members of Congress won their lawsuit challenging a Department of Homeland Security policy from June that required a week’s notice from lawmakers before an oversight visit. Now they’re accusing Homeland Security of having “secretly reimposed” the requirement last week.

In a Jan. 8 memorandum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that “Facility visit requests must be made a minimum of seven (7) calendar days in advance. Any requests to shorten that time must be approved by me.”

The lawmakers who challenged the policies are led by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and include five members from California: Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) and Norma Torres (D-Pomona).

Last summer, as immigration raids spread through Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, many Democrats including those named in the lawsuit were denied entry to local detention facilities. Before then, unannounced inspections had been a common, long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will…and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” the plaintiffs wrote in a federal court motion Monday requesting an emergency hearing.

On Saturday, three days after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, three members of Congress from Minnesota attempted to conduct an oversight visit of an ICE facility near Minneapolis. They were denied access.

Afterward, lawyers for Homeland Security notified the lawmakers and the court of the new policy, according to the court filing.

In a joint statement, the plaintiffs wrote that “rather than complying with the law, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to get around this order by re-imposing the same unlawful policy.”

“This is unacceptable,” they said. “Oversight is a core responsibility of Members of Congress, and a constitutional duty we do not take lightly. It is not something the executive branch can turn on or off at will.”

Congress has stipulated in yearly appropriations packages since 2020 that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

That language formed the basis of the decision last month by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, who found that lawmakers cannot be denied entry for visits “unless and until” the government could show that no appropriations money was being used to operate detention facilities.

In her policy memorandum, Noem wrote that funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which supplied roughly $170 billion toward immigration and border enforcement, are not subject to the limitations of the yearly appropriations law.

“ICE must ensure that this policy is implemented and enforced exclusively with money appropriated by OBBBA,” Noem said.

Noem said the new policy is justified because unannounced visits pull ICE officers away from their normal duties. “Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions,” she wrote.

The lawmakers, in the court filing, argued it’s clear that the new policy violates the law.

“It is practically impossible that the development, promulgation, communication, and implementation of this policy has been, and will be, accomplished — as required — without using a single dollar of annually appropriated funds,” they wrote.