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The US President does not usually take advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

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

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to top 2023's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements 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 the advisor's persistent claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “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 judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. 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.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s objectives, the expert said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently