🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and compliment the US president.

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

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm methods employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement recently was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during online attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Prior to resuming office this year, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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