🔗 Share this article

The US President rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different approach 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 US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, 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 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

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

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The government is looking around at these achievements 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 noted: “They openly attack the courts by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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