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The US President is not typically known for guidance, particularly from international figures who frequently attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a distinct approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered support 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 Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to stop deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” 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” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently