🔗 Share this article

The US President rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm methods employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch 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 Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks 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 fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions 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 government structure.

“They persist in redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

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 Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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