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The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods used by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement last week was one more in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

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

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to top 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

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

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

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

“The government is observing at these successes 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 Miller’s relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “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 discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' 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 think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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