🔗 Share this article

The US President is not typically known for advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar strong-arm methods used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued during online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Prior to resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible 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 impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

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

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

“The administration is observing at these successes and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

On the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently