Trump Supporters Back Bukele's Call for Trump to Target US Judges

The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who often attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's online call last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise hindered the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide 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 first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several 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 Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad executive power, she noted: “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 redefine the debate by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts 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.”

Coercion Methods

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 warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the government's aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently