Trump Supporters Back Bukele's Plea for Trump to Target US Judiciary

The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

Global Strongman Tactics

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term despite legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal 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 weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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