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Donald Trump rarely accepts advice, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the White House to emulate his actions in removing what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for Trump to move against the US judiciary also received support from Maga figures, including an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's calls to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's recent intervention come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using similar authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Turkey, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's order to halt removal operations transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made during social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued restraining orders preventing Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the urban homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, the former AG, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's political agenda. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased climate of risks and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Risk Data

According to data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's record of 630 threats.

The dangers are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 cases of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a product of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

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

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term despite legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's overhaul of the nation's judiciary several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the executive to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by strongmen abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

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

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their ability to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the son of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in several years ago by a gunman targeting Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

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