Trump Supporters Endorse El Salvador Leader's Call for Trump to Crack Down on US Judiciary

Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's recent intervention occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month 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 Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

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

In several years ago, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

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

“The administration is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” 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 judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently