Maga Supporters Back Bukele's Plea for US President to Crack Down on US Judiciary

The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by leaders in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

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

Global Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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