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The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent remarks occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm methods employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters 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 highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to data collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

Global Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding 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 legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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