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The US President does not usually take counsel, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the US president.

However, the Central American nation's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm methods used by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump himself in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in several countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, 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 judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“US justices are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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