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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, especially from international figures who often attempt to flatter and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the White House to follow his example in removing what he terms “dishonest 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 one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's calls to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts note that the leader's recent intervention occur of unprecedented threats to judicial independence and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native the Central American country to undermine government oversight.

The president's social media call recently was one more in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the American judiciary, including a March claim that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a court's ruling to halt deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's harsh prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's demand for removal was also made during online criticism on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

The judge had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to send soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Targeting Judges

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have highlighted a increased atmosphere of threats and coercion in the months since he re-entered the presidency.

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 US justices, leading to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to exceed the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Data from the university's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, targeting, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Experts state that the intimidation are a result of the rhetoric coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a comprehensive report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and supporters 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 January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Beirich, the co-founder of the organization, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Attacking the courts is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

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

In several years ago, immediately after starting a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and five justices on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of the nation's judiciary 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

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a system that offers no easy way for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Citing examples such as the advisor's relentless assertions of broad presidential authority, she added: “They openly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in redefine the debate by repeating their argument that the president has greater authority than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of sociology and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “harassment deliveries” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the Marshals Service. And these are dedicated law enforcement that sit structurally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Government Goals

Regarding the administration’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