Maga Figures Back Bukele's Call for US President to Crack Down on US Judiciary

The US President rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm methods used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

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

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top 2023's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine 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 studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad executive power, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances 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 eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology 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 pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the government's aims, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently