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Donald Trump is not typically known for counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

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

The call for the president to move against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement recently was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top 2023's high of 630 threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. 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 the past decade in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently