🔗 Share this article

The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

But, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's recent remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

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

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago 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 guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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