Maga Supporters Endorse El Salvador Leader's Call for US President to Target US Judges

Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument 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 rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, 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 written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently