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The US President rarely accepts advice, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, peaceful protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a heightened climate of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in recent years in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, 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 several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

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

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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