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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who often attempt to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has previously amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that the leader's recent remarks occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's online statement last week was one more in a long series of provocations and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had issued restraining orders blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in California. The president has been eager to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top 2023's high of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Threat Sources

Experts say that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from the first two months of this year, the initial period of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

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

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by repeating their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

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

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, 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. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges 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 leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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