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The US President is not typically known for guidance, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's recent remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm methods employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call recently was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Prior to resuming office this year, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a new term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had learned from the models 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 judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

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

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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