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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during social media attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts say that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust 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 decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently