Maga Figures Endorse El Salvador Leader's Plea for Trump to Crack Down on US Judiciary

The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of risks and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Specialists 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 claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

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

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman aiming at the judge.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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