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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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