🔗 Share this article

The US President rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different approach by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the American court system also garnered backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm methods employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s objectives, the expert said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently