🔗 Share this article

Donald Trump is not typically known for counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

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

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's recent remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was one more in a string 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 ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

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

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

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

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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