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Donald Trump is not typically known for counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent remarks occur of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement last week was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during online criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the urban homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by the university's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a 54% increase in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple nations, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s attorney general and five judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by replacements selected by the leader.

The action mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the president to dismiss judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by strongmen overseas.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“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 specialized law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been spearheading the attacks on federal judges.”

Government Goals

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