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The US President rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had issued restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts 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 viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned 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 undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this judicial 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 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, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. 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 highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently