Trump Supporters Endorse El Salvador Leader's Call for Trump to Target American Judges

Donald Trump is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable strong-arm tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued during online attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

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

Rising Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House 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 judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate 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 social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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