Maga Figures Back Bukele's Call for Trump to Crack Down on US Judges

The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of risks and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

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

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

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

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

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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