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Donald Trump does not usually take advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's latest intervention occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian methods employed by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call recently was one more in a string of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to resuming office recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

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

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, giving rise to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, 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 highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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