On March 27, 2022, on the heels of a weekend marked by dozens of gang-related murders, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and his legislature plunged the country into a régimen de excepción — a state of exception — and declared war against the gangs. The state of exception suspended fundamental rights like freedom of assembly and association, the right to legal representation, and the right to see a judge within 72 hours of detention. The age of criminal responsibility was lowered to 12.

The crackdown that ensued saw tens of thousands of arrests of suspected gang members, who were tried en masse and disappeared into the nation’s prison system without even the illusion of due process. Allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses abounded — and still do. Bukele is serving a second term despite a constitutional prohibition against it. The state of exception — originally a 30-day decree — has been extended 37 times. Over the course of three years, human rights in El Salvador have crumbled under its boot.

It’s here that President Donald Trump hopes to find a workable model for his own immigration crackdown, and the potential eradication of opposition to his nativist, right-wing agenda.

“An activist judge is no judge at all, just someone wearing a costume,” Musk responded to a post from rightwing commentator Matt Walsh that suggested Trump should “go to war against activist judges”.

Musk has also received support from foreign leaders who have attacked their countries’ judiciaries and challenged the rule of law. He responded with a “100” emoji to a post from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that claimed “when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system”. Netanyahu attempted in 2023 to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary, prompting nationwide protests and fears of a constitutional crisis.

El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele’s party ousted all supreme court judges in 2021 as human rights groups warned about a slide into authoritarianism, has become a repeated point of comparison for Musk. He retweeted a post from Bukele on Tuesday that claimed the “U.S. is facing a judicial coup” and repeated that language himself in later posts.

In another post, Musk responded “it is the only way” to a failed far-right US congressional candidate who suggested that the country should emulate El Salvador by investigating politicians and impeaching “all corrupt judges”. The former candidate, Valentina Gomez, received media attention last year for a campaign video in which she burned LGBTQ+-themed books with a flamethrower.

Musk, who has met with Bukele and praised his strongman presidency, has also previously suggested he wants to carry out a similar hollowing out of the judiciary. “The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Musk tweeted on 25 February, reposting Bukele. “That is what it took to fix El Salvador. Same applies to America.”