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The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

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

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online statement recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

According to information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

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

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

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

“They persist in redefine the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized police units that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently