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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by calling on the White House to follow his example in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for Trump to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Trump allies, including an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable strong-arm tactics used by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during online attacks on the state's justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

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

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of over six hundred reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

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

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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