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

The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable strong-arm methods employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement recently was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to send troops into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

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

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection 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 leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently