Trump Figures Back Bukele's Call for US President to Crack Down on US Judiciary

The US President is not typically known for guidance, especially from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to resuming office this year, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.

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

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, 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 unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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