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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media call recently was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and physical intimidation 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 the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The government is looking around 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 persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has warned 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 child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

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

Government Goals

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