The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to flatter and compliment the American leader.
But, the Central American nation's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”
The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.
Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.
The president's online call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.
Bukele's demand for removal was also made amid online criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.
Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.
The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.
Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.
According to information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's high of over six hundred threats.
The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.
Specialists state that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.
In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a 54% rise 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 the president's term.”
Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”
This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, including by Bukele.
In 2021, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.
The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.
Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.
Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.
“The administration is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.
Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.
“They continue to redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”
The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”
Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.
She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.
“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” the professor said.
“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”
On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently
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