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

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a distinct strategy by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's latest intervention occur of unmatched dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has leveled against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Criticism on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid social media attacks on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Before resuming office this year, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is on track to top 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Expert Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “malicious and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with rising violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, 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 nation's top prosecutor and several justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by ruling against pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken judicial independence in a system that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly criticize the courts by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising dangers to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are protected by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And those are both dedicated law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Administration Aims

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