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Donald Trump rarely accepts guidance, especially from international figures who frequently attempt to praise and compliment the American leader.

However, El Salvador's strongman president Bukele has followed a different strategy by calling on the Trump administration to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

His appeal for the president to take action against the US judiciary also received backing from Maga figures, including an social media message by former close Trump ally Elon Musk, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to impeach US judges.

Growing Threats to Court Autonomy

Experts say that the leader's latest intervention occur of unprecedented dangers to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using comparable authoritarian methods employed by leaders in countries such as Turkey, the European state, India, and his native the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's online statement last week was one more in a string of provocations and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, such as a spring assertion that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt deportation flights transporting suspected illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Criticism on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's demand for removal was also issued during online attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Miller, attorney general Bondi, Elon Musk, and the president himself in a latest media briefing.

Immergut had ordered injunctions blocking Trump from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. Trump has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

Record of Targeting Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and Musk have a long record of attacking judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the government's policy goals. Before returning to power this year, the president directed his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and harassment.

Monitoring groups, law enforcement agencies, and the justices have pointed to a increased atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on information collected by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's record of 630 threats.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least 59 instances of threats, harassment, surveillance, or physical attacks directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a comprehensive report claiming that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with rising aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the first full month of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have definitely driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Targeting the courts is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Strongman Tactics

This progression towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a second term in the face of legal bans, the president's allies in congress voted to remove the nation's attorney general and several judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by the leader.

The action echoed the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; the Turkish president's judicial purges recently; and attempts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at the university who has researched democratic decline in free nations, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians overseas.

“The administration is observing 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 instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of broad executive power, she noted: “They openly attack the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, highly concerning for court oversight and for democracy.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, professor of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the recipient listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Justice Salas, who was murdered at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

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

Administration Aims

On 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