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The US President does not usually take advice, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent remarks come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online statement recently was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

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

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the intimidation 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 remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president 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 capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about escalating dangers 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 recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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