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

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

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received support from Trump allies, including an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has in the past amplified Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Risks to Judicial Independence

Experts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unmatched dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian methods employed by rulers in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to undermine democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media call last week was one more in a string of taunts and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a federal judge's order to stop removal operations sending accused undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid social media criticism on Oregon justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump himself in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions preventing the administration from mobilizing the national guard, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been pushing to send soldiers into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Justices

Miller, Bondi, and Musk have a history of attacking judges who have blocked presidential directives or in other ways impeded the government's policy goals. Prior to resuming office this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have highlighted a heightened atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the period since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to 805 inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and 2024, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the local level in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the language 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 coincide with escalating violent posts on social media.” It noted “a 54% rise in demands for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s warnings against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Targeting the courts is another move in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in several nations, such as by Bukele.

In several years ago, immediately after starting a new term in the face of legal bans, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and Poland.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts say that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be seen as efforts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that offers no easy way for the executive to dismiss judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad executive power, she added: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts 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

Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of the Hungarian and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

On the government's objectives, the expert said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently