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The US President rarely accepts guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the US president.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made during social media criticism on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

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

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, the former AG, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have blocked presidential directives or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, the president directed his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on 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 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after commencing a new term despite legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts 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 remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, 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 2020 by a assailant targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the government's aims, Scheppele said that “removing a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently