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The US President rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to move against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is using similar strong-arm methods employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's social media call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during online criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

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

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to 395 federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. This year has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the intimidation are a product of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in the administration's advance towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in several countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for replacements hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Experts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults 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 the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues 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 enact any legislation that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Citing instances such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad executive power, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian 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 unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman 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 Secret Service and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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