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The US President is not typically known for advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often attempt to praise and admire the American leader.

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

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered support from Maga figures, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that Bukele's recent remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online attacks on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send soldiers into the city, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the urban federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise impeded the government's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information 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, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It noted “a 54% rise in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

That march towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in several countries, including by Bukele.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary in 2018; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and efforts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing instances such as the advisor's persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal 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 think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant aiming at the judge.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are dedicated police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

Regarding the government'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