Maga Figures Endorse Bukele's Call for US President to Target American Judges

The US President does not usually take guidance, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House 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 support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks 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 tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's online call recently was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of risks and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system 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 say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate 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, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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