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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call last week was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

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

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently