🔗 Share this article

The US President does not usually take guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued during social media criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top 2023's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

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

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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