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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, such as an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian methods employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's online call last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to stop deportation flights transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

History of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Threat Sources

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It noted “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

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

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

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

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And these are specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “removing a federal judge is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently