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The US President is not typically known for counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently attempt to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has followed a distinct approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

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

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's latest intervention occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid social media attacks on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability 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, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

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