🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats 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 executive to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently