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

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the American court system also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred 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 threats.

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

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

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

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

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

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for replacements selected by the leader.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs 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 termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s objectives, the expert said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently