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The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing 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.

Record of Attacking Judges

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways 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 harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the initial period 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 demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss 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 hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary 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 claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation 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 court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All understands 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 these are specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

On 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