🔗 Share this article

The US President does not usually take advice, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, including an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent remarks occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online call last week was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House 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 enact any laws that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating 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' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated police units that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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