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The US President does not usually take counsel, particularly from international figures who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched 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 Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online statement recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased climate of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of 630 threats.

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

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs 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 wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection 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 spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently