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

The US President rarely accepts guidance, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, 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. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating 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 customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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