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The US President does not usually take counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct approach by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an X post by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

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

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of 630 threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

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

Global Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts say that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues 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 enact any legislation that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently