Maga Figures Endorse Bukele's Call for Trump to Target American Judges

The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

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

“The administration is observing at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate 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, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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