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The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

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

The call for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's recent intervention occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics used by leaders in countries such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, leading to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

Global Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

“The administration is observing at these successes and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They directly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently