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The US President does not usually take advice, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and compliment the US president.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to top 2023's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise 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 Trump’s administration.”

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

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

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

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the government's aims, 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