🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump does not usually take counsel, particularly from international figures who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using similar strong-arm methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media call last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, Trump directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term despite legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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