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The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from international figures who often seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 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 driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts 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 repeating their claim that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. 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 court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic 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 series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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