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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from international figures who often seek to praise and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian tactics used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online call last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also issued amid online attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have highlighted a heightened climate of risks and coercion in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats 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 threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

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

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's attorney general and five justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

“The government is observing at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to redefine the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority 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 authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight 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 Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in several years ago by a gunman targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded 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 the former AG has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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