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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who often seek to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing 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.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

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

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in California. The president has been pushing to send troops into the city, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February 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 ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated police units that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently