Trump Figures Endorse El Salvador Leader's Plea for Trump to Target American Judiciary

Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state 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 claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

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

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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