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The US President does not usually take guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm methods employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. 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, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, 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 pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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