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The US President is not typically known for counsel, especially from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media attacks on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to send soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing 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 atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The dangers are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several countries, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

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

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by repeating their claim that the president 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. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

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

Administration Aims

Regarding the government's objectives, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently