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The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, such as an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call last week was one more in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts say that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

Global Strongman Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

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

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

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

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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