Trump Figures Back Bukele's Call for US President to Target US Judiciary

The US President does not usually take counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a distinct approach by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian methods used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement last week was one more 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 ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

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 eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing 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 months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in several countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

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

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently