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The US President is not typically known for counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

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

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian tactics used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media statement recently was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

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

Immergut had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office recently, the president directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

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

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups recently; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the courts by stating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at the judge.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently