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

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, 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 Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, right after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting 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 presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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