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

The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using similar authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. The president has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is looking around at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. 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, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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