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The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from international figures who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted Bukele's calls to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian methods used by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, including a spring claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his country's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made during social media attacks on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and the president himself in a recent press gaggle.

Immergut had ordered restraining orders preventing the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “war-ravaged” based on small, non-violent protests outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, 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 returning to power recently, Trump urged his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to information collected by the US Marshals Service, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the intimidation are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with escalating violent posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

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

International Authoritarian Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by replacements hand picked by the leader.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They directly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“Everyone understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” Scheppele said.

“Federal judges are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “removing a US justice is highly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently