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Donald Trump is not typically known for guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters 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 heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the nation's top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “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 debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers 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 institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently