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Donald Trump does not usually take advice, particularly from international figures who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call recently was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to top 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers 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, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

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

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by repeating their claim that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats 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 judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

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

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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