🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm methods used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of risks and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading 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 national level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” 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 first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

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

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, 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 targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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