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The US President does not usually take advice, particularly from international figures who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that Bukele's latest intervention come at a time of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online call recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the administration's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, Trump urged his followers against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of threats and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the third quarter, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is on track to exceed 2023's record of over six hundred threats.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies align with rising violent posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms 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 online vitriol at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in several nations, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after starting a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against coronavirus measures, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the intimidation and verbal assaults 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 disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models 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 laws that would undermine the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as the advisor's relentless assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted 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 Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

“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 institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Government Goals

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