Maga Figures Endorse Bukele's Call for Trump to Target US Judiciary

Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from international figures who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online call recently was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently