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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the American court system also garnered backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, first in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a increased climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

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

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently