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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to praise and admire the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Trump allies, including an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has previously amplified the Salvadoran's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Risks to Court Autonomy

Analysts note that Bukele's latest remarks occur of unprecedented threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the US, and during a period where the president's team is employing similar strong-arm tactics used by rulers in countries such as Türkiye, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's online statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, such as a March assertion that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and ridicule of a federal judge's ruling to halt removal operations transporting suspected undocumented individuals to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid online criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the national guard, first in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent protests outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Judges

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or otherwise hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges overseeing his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

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

Rising Threat Statistics

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. This year 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 only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a product of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters coincide with escalating aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have definitely fueled digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is one more step in Trump’s march towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Playbook

This progression towards autocracy has been common in recent years in multiple countries, such as by Bukele.

In 2021, right after commencing a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to remove the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had angered him by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by the leader.

The move echoed Viktor Orbán’s overhaul of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Judicial Independence

Analysts explain that the intimidation and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as efforts to undermine court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has studied authoritarian backsliding in democracies, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians abroad.

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

Pointing to examples such as the advisor's relentless claims of broad presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the courts by repeating over and over that it is not a equal branch in the government structure.

“They continue to redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive 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 capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of eroding institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for the political system.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies 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 threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a wave of termed “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as a name, the son of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a assailant targeting the judge.

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

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And these are dedicated law enforcement that are placed structurally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been leading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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