Trump Figures Back Bukele's Call for US President to Target US Judges

Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online call recently was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by repeating their claim that the president has greater authority 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 ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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