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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from international figures who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's latest remarks occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's social media call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise hindered the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 US justices, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

International Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently