🔗 Share this article

The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to praise and admire the US president.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm methods used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement recently was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide 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, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump directed his supporters 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 heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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 detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“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 judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

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

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science 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 threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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