Trump Supporters Back El Salvador Leader's Plea for Trump to Crack Down on American Judges

Donald Trump does not usually take counsel, particularly from international figures who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call last week was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered restraining orders blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is looking around at these successes and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the government's aims, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently