Maga Supporters Endorse El Salvador Leader's Plea for US President to Target US Judges

Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

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

The call for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in several countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad executive power, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently