Maga Figures Endorse El Salvador Leader's Call for Trump to Target US Judiciary

The US President is not typically known for advice, especially from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made during online attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of over six hundred 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 cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline 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 enact any legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. 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