The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.
But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different approach by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”
The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.
Growing Threats to Court Autonomy
Analysts say that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian methods employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.
The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.
Attacks on Federal Judge
The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.
Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.
Record of Attacking Justices
The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.
Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.
Increasing Threat Statistics
According to data collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.
The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.
Expert Insights on Threat Sources
Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.
In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”
Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”
Global Strongman Tactics
That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.
In 2021, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.
The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.
Undermining Court Autonomy
Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.
Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.
“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 undermine the judiciary,” she said.
Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.
“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”
Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening 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 democracy.”
Intimidation Tactics
Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.
She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.
“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.
“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”
Government Goals
On the administration’s objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently
