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The US President rarely accepts counsel, particularly from international figures who often attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by leaders in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase 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.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Tactics

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

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Judges' 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 decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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