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

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

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

Bukele's online call last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in the state then in California. The president has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have pointed to a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to top 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, right after commencing a new term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The administration is observing at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by repeating their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

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

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated police units that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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