🔗 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.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call recently was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to data 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 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

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

Government Goals

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently