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The US President does not usually take guidance, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has followed a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, such as an X post by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using 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.

Bukele's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid social media criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 instances of intimidation, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment 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 co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, made way for replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

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

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the discussion 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 people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient 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 understands 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 Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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