🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

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

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy 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

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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