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The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian methods employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued during social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's political agenda. Prior to resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased climate of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed 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 language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

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

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

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

Government Goals

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