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The US President rarely accepts advice, particularly from international figures who often attempt to praise and admire the American leader.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by urging the White House to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the US judiciary also garnered backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Experts say that the leader's latest intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a phase where the president's team is employing comparable authoritarian tactics used by leaders in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, India, and Bukele's own El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

The president's social media call recently was just the latest in a long series of provocations and allegations he has leveled against the US's legal system, including a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a court's order to halt deportation flights transporting accused undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also made amid online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, former AG Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, first in the state then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Attacking Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's political agenda. Before returning to power recently, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then inundated with intimidation and harassment.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of threats and coercion in the period since he re-entered the presidency.

Increasing Risk Data

Based on information gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred incidents to 395 US justices, leading to 805 investigations. This year has already surpassed 2022, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or physical attacks committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

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

In May, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “malicious and reckless statements from Trump administration members and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It noted “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across social media platforms from January to February of this year, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have definitely fueled online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

Global Authoritarian Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after starting a second term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and attempts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Undermining Judicial Independence

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

Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the White House had taken cues from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of broad executive power, she added: “They directly attack the judiciary by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

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

The professor said: “Judges' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Personal intimidation 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 court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and Putin, and has warned about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a gunman targeting the judge.

“All knows what it means. ‘We know where you live. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“US justices are protected by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are specialized police units that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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