Maga Supporters Back Bukele's Plea for Trump to Target American Judiciary

Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during online criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group 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 noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

“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 judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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