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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the American court system also garnered backing from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using comparable strong-arm methods used by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call recently was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop deportation flights transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued during online attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, the president urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to 805 investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

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 cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is another move in the administration's march towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

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

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is observing at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

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

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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