'Illegal at many levels': Trump's new move restricts voting rights without proper approval

President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order that sidesteps congressional approval process, in order to attempt to restrict voting rights, according to a report.

The order borrows heavily from the Republican-backed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which appears likely to pass the House but faces an uncertain future in the Senate, but legal expects say the president doesn't have the authority to make those changes – which may conflict with federal voting laws, reported NPR.

"It's illegal at many different levels," said Sean Morales-Doyle, the voting rights director at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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The order directs the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission to change the federal voter registration form to require voters to show proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to a local or state official, but Morales-Doyle said he cannot tell commissioners to do.

The order also requires states, which have long been authorized to manage their own elections as long as they meet minimum federal standards, to remove noncitizens from voter rolls and share data to prosecute election crimes, and it provides access by the Department of Government Efficiency team, or DOGE, to state voter rolls.

It also directs federal agencies to share data, such as immigration and Social Security records, to states to allow officials to check the eligibility of names on their voter rolls, but voting rights advocates warn that outdated databases can contain errors and say past efforts by states to remove noncitizens from voter rolls have swept up eligible U.S. citizens.

Trump's executive order also threatens to withhold funding from states that allow mail or absentee ballots received after Election Day to be counted.

The order provides a limited number of ways to prove U.S. citizenship, such as a U.S. passport, an ID that complies with the REAL ID Act, a military ID that shows citizenship, a valid government photo ID that "indicates that the applicant is a United States citizen or if such identification is otherwise accompanied by proof of United States citizenship."

It's not clear whether a birth certificate would count.