The US President does not usually take counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and admire the American leader.
However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”
The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.
Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar strong-arm tactics employed by leaders in countries such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.
Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims 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 order to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.
The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.
The judge had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.
Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.
Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.
According to data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.
The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.
Experts say that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.
In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”
Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”
This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in several nations, including by Bukele.
In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.
The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.
Experts explain that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.
Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.
“The government is observing at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would undermine the courts,” she said.
Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.
“They continue to redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the executive 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 ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”
Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.
She pointed to a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at the judge.
“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.
“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”
Regarding the government's aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently
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