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

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different approach by urging the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest judges.”

His appeal for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also made amid online criticism on the state's federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in California. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into Portland, which the president has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of criticizing judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power this year, the president directed his followers against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened climate of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to top the previous year's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's research project shows that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, targeting, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

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

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters align with escalating violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the courts is another move in the administration's advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's overhaul of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as efforts to weaken judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The government is observing at these successes and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any laws that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless executive power, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and Putin, and has warned about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in several years ago by a assailant targeting Salas.

“All understands what it means. ‘We know where you live. You are a target,’” Scheppele said.

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, 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