Maga Supporters Endorse El Salvador Leader's Plea for Trump to Crack Down on US Judges

The US President is not typically known for advice, particularly from international figures who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, the president urged his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently